Once We Have A Self Sustaining Mars Colony - Then What?

On 12/18/2016 10:20 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Jonathan wrote:


When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
a truly useful commodity like space solar power
can become practical and the free markets will
have a new reason to build large structures
in space.


It's cheaper to build your solar power plant down here. Again, the
cost of lifting all that stuff from Earth in the first place makes
space-based solar far too expensive. Hell, Earth-based solar is too
expensive right now and space-based costs at least an order of
magnitude more.




The advantage of SSP is that it can beam energy to
places where building a power plant, with all the
infrastructure that requires, isn't practical.

For instance to areas too thinly populated to
justify a power plant, too remote to justify
all the roads and rail lines to support a power
plant and so on. And the costs of SSP are up front
in building the satellites, once that's done
it's far easier and cheaper to build new
power networks as it just requires the
receiver, not a new expensive power plant.

Also it can be used to provide peak power demands
at existing plants that need extra power generation.
So SSP can be sold at peak prices. There are all kinds
of things SSP can do that conventional power plants
can't do in terms of accessibility, at least once
the day comes fossil fuel prices reach the
point SSP becomes competitive.

Not to mention SSP can be used to power larger satellites
and other orbital power needs.


And why would a solar power satellite require people?



They are very large structures and large investments
that could need and afford manned support in orbit.
It would seem unlikely such large efforts could be built
and maintained entirely by remote means.


s

In article ,
says...

Jeff Findley wrote:


Hell, John Deere is working on an all electric tractor ("full-sized",
not some tiny sub-scale prototype) which will improve efficiency and
overall reliability.


And this is actually a great application for electrics if the thing
isn't significantly more expensive than a regular tractor. It could
plow or whatever all day at the usual slow tractor speeds, then go
plug in and recharge at night.

From what I've read, it will go for 4 hours before needing charged. So,
you'd need to take three breaks to get a solid 16 hours of work in (e.g.
harvesting). That's not too unreasonable, but might be a negative when
trying to sell it. Higher reliability would be a huge plus though.
Breaking down while doing something fairly time/weather critical like
planting is a bad thing.

If it's autonomous and you can run it
at night, you could buy an extra set of batteries and keep one set on
charge while the other is being used.

That's an excellent point. Drive the thing around for one season to
allow it to learn how you want it to traverse the fields and you should
be good to go from then on. If something goes wrong, it could text you
"human decision required".

What makes electric cars impractical are the range issues and how long
they take to charge. This is much less an issue with something like a
tractor.

True. With two battery packs that can be swapped, this becomes quite
easy for a farm. Worst case, a farmer with truly huge fields many miles
away from an electrical source might have to use a truck to bring
freshly charged battery packs to the tractors and take the spent packs
back to the barn for recharging. But assuming autonomous tractors, a
single farmer should be able to keep several tractors supplied with
battery packs throughout the day.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

On 12/18/2016 9:17 PM, William Mook wrote:
On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 12:44:32 AM UTC+13, Jonathan wrote:
On 12/17/2016 10:59 PM, William Mook wrote:



Dated does not mean outdated.

WIth an evergrowing population of ever wealthier individuals, it is
doubtful that the Earth will long supply the material needs of humanity.
For that reason it is imperative to develop the means to meet this
ever growing need from resources found in interplanetary space.

If items on Mars cannot be made and delivered to Earth more cheaply
than Earth based resources, then there is no reason to ever go to Mars.
Fortunately mass driver technology and power plant technology exists
TODAY that make that possible.




You're conclusion has a glaring logical flaw.

No it doesn't.

If we can't
learn to live on Earth in a sustainable way, given it's
incredible abundance and ideal conditions,

The biosphere is ideal for lower forms of life who don't mind
competing tooth and claw and creating a culture of the survival of the
fittest to that lower order irrespective of other higher values humanity
might wish to develop.

Conditions on Earth are non-ideal for an intelligent industrial
species. It is only by creating an industrial infrastructure that
exists independently of the biosphere, and in fact sustains terrestrial
conditions off world that we can continue to grow and develop as an
intelligent industrial species.

then we
can't learn to live in a sustainable way
anywhere...else.

Definition of sustainable
1: capable of being sustained
2 a : of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a
resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged
sustainable techniques sustainable agriculture

b : of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable
methods sustainable society

Either we learn to live within our means here
on Earth, or...else.

There are insufficient resources on Earth today to sustain everyone
at a high living standard. So, we must either establish a repressive
governance world wide to allocate those limited resources in a
sustainable way, or we must reduce populations, or we must reduce living
standards to do as you say. All three avenues are being pursued at the
present time.






I've been hearing that for a long time, it's a myth.

For instance world poverty has plummeted in the
last 20 or 30 years even though the population has
soared from some 4.4 billion to 7 billion in
the same time if I recall correctly.



Did we really reduce extreme poverty by half in 30 years?
http://www.politifact.com/global-new...half-30-years/



Dictatorships and the wars, famines and disease they
propagate is the problem, not limited Earth resources.
Most of the surface of the Earth is uninhabited
and can support twice the current population with ease.

With the spread of democracy and free markets the Earth would
become a naturally evolving system, it would become able
to adapt and sustain itself in a healthy and stable way.

It's the poor condition of our societal structures that
are the problem, fix that and all our problems vanish
into thin air.







Abundant resources exist off world today. More than enough to
sustain everyone at a high living standard, independently of the
biosphere. By making use of these resources we can continue with the
current population at the current rate of growth, and arrange
deployement of infrastructure and capital to sustain a very high living
standard for that large and growing population.


The notion we can make it on Mars with it's
harsh conditions and sparse bounties, but not
on Earth, doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense to those who have accepted the anti-human
propaganda of the past fifty years. However, the dated material from
Dr. Ehricke shows that there were other approaches that could be pursued
to provide a growing every wealthier population that has the capacity to
maintain the biodiversity and capacity of Earth's life form, and sustain
conditions beyond Earth using technology that permit that biodiversity
to expand and grow to other worlds.

Don't be fooled by the harsh conditions of Mars. You are making a
logical error to equate harsh living conditions with sparse bounties.
Iron for example is superabundant and easily recovered on Mars. Other
elements are equally superabundant.






Even if Mars was coated in diamonds and gold and whatever
valuable resource you could imagine. You know what mining
those resources and shipping them back to Earth would do?

ALL IT WOULD DO is ruin perfectly good commodity markets
here on Earth. It would destroy our economic systems
not help them.







And what does 'ever wealthier individuals' have
to do with it?

Wealthy individuals command more energy and resources than poor
individuals. That's what it means to be wealthy. In many senses
someone that can command the useful time and attention of 100 people
continuously to their needs and live on 1000 acres with 10,000 tons of
raw material organised for their pleasure, is vastly wealthier than a
person who lives in 80 square meters and only a few hours a week of
their own time is available to them after taxes fees and other
overheads, to meet their own needs, while only 2.5 tons of raw materials
are organised for their living needs. Wealthy individuals have fewer
children on average. Wealthy populations import workers to make up the
shortfall in numbers their low reproduction rates cause. A world of
very wealthy individuals all reproducing at rates that are below
replacement levels, using robotic labour to provide for human labour
shortfalls, requires vastly more resources than exist on Earth today if
we are to sustain this for the world's current population.

To the extent that land, material, energy and useful time and
attention depend on the capacity of the Earth's biosphere to sustain it,
is the degree of impact we humans have on the biosphere. To the extent
that land, material, energy and useful time and attention are totally
independent of the Earth's biosphere to sustain it, provides a trophic
change in the human condition and sets the stage for a trophic cascade
that restores balance of the biosphere. To the degree we can build
infrastructure that sustains conditoins suitable for life off world is
the degree with which we can expand our biosphere.

Plus in the western free market
democracies population growth isn't an issue
implying that freedom and democracy is the
solution to population growth and sustainable
societies.

Markets are not as free as you imagine and democracy is not as
responsive as you believe as Edward Bernays pointed out in his ground
breaking 1929 classic "Propaganda".

The real factor impacting growth rate is the living standard of the
top 5% of the world's population who consume 50% of the world's
resources. If all were to consume at the rate of the top 5% we would
need to produce 19x the output we do today and that cannot be sustained
with the resources remaining on Earth.

Very wealthy populations have higher degree of education and a
greater range of personal liberty having nothing to do with politics. A
person living in a Kingdom with a controlled market like Qatar has a per
person income of $105,000 per year average whilst the Democratic
Republic of Congo under virtually lawless conditions has a per person
income of $395 per year average. Providing a counter-example to your
presumption that democracy and free markets create wealth.

You are correct that those with higher income have lower reproductive
rates while those with lower income have higher reproductive rates.
Sociologists argue about this one, but one common element seems to be
higher income generally available.

Now, with industry tied inexorably to the biosphere and terrestrial
resources, we must get rid of about 85% of the people alive today to
have the remaining 15% live at a standard that is sufficient to maintain
a balance with nature. That implies the death of 6.4 billion people at
the moment. The problem with this approach is that if an event or
series of events are unleashed or allowed to happen on the planet to
depopulate it to this extent, there is very little difference between
wiping out 85% and 100% of humanity. that is, welcoming this approach
is tantamount to welcoming our extinction. Even if we should survive
physically it is doubtful we will survive emotionally and
psychologically as the same species. The sociological consequences of
such an act of depopulation would also be immense. I doubt if anyone
alive today would recognise the survivors of such a depopulation event
as human.

Further, this is a solution to a resource problem that has other
solutions. You don't solve the problem of there not being enough hats
by beheading people. You solve the problem of there not being enough
hats by figuring out how to make more hats. The fact the resources lie
beyone where you've been before is no excuse for not going after them.






America is a massive consumer due to our higher standard of living, yet
America is a net energy....producer now. We ship more energy overseas
then we import. That is what it means to have a stable free market
democracy that mimics naturally evolving system.

In the last 50 years as America has grown substantially
in every way, our energy balance has become positive.
That shows the future isn't bleak, but quite the
opposite. If our democracy and others improve such
problems become a thing of the past.



APRIL 15, 2015
U.S. energy imports and exports to come into balance
for first time since 1950s
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=20812



America, as a large stable free market democracy, is a force
for economic and political stability world wide, as democracy
spreads that effect will have large and lasting adaptive
effects that will allow us to live within our means.

And as other nations such as China rise in standard of living
and find democracy, their population growth will fall
and energy efficiency will increase.










Not running away from the problems with
colonizing Mars as a solution.

Turning our back on the resources of the solar system is not the
solution either. Our species over-ran the resources of Olduvai Gorge
some 1.9 million years ago. We naturally expanded our range by
developing ways of living that allowed us to survive in environments we
were not naturally suited to. This involves technology and the
consumption of secondary resources to support that technology. By
asking humanity to to turn its back on the frontier is asking humanity
to make a fundamental change in its make up that has assured its
dominance on Earth and will clearly lead to an extinction event that has
no guarantee of limiting itself to 85% of the total. An extinction
event of this magnitude could very well wipe out everyone.

The only practical question is, can we supply Earth's population with
off-world resources in a way that frees the terrestrial population of
its negative interactions with the terrestrial biosphere? Can it do so
at a cost that is substantially less than making use of the resources on
Earth? Given that we are saving the lives of 6.4 billion people alive
today, and enriching the lives of 7.1 billion persons by making use of
off world resources in this way, it makes sense to give it some serious
consideration.

Can we make use of off-world resources more cheaply on Earth than
using resources made on Earth? The answer to this question is
surprisingly yes. Here's why;

The cost of anything is dictated by a number of factors;

(1) Raw material costs, including environmental costs,
(2) Energy costs,
(3) Labour costs,
(4) Social costs,
(5) Transport costs,

Let's take the example of iron on Earth vs. Iron on Mars.

Iron does not exist freely on Earth, but in ores that at the present
time must be enriched to be usable at all. The availability of ores on
Earth is strictly limited and use rates even with infinite recycling are
difficult to expand to 19x consumption levels needed. Iron does exist
freely on Mars and there is a superabundance of hematite on Mars turning
the entire planet red. Hematite a high grade ore on Earth and quite
rare in comparison to Mars.

Nuclear energy involving unshielded reactors using high grade fissile
materials produce energy that is too cheap to meter. Such reactor
operation cannot occur on Earth for a variety of reasons. One is that
the biosphere of Earth is intolerant of radiation. Another is that
there are nuclear weapons on Earth and we must limit their spread given
our fractured social and political conditions. On Mars neither of these
concerns apply. Mars is already quite radioactive compared to Earth.
Settlers there will live in environments engineered to eliminate this
radiation hazard. So, the use of unshielded or lightly shielded
reactors are possible. Nuclear wepons do not exist on Mars. So,
concern about proliferation of weapons on Mars isn't an issue either.
So, the use of highly enriched materials in unsheilded or lightly
shielded compact high temperature reactors, produces energy that is 1%
or less the cost of energy production on Earth. So, energy is less
expensive on Mars.

Anyone who has used Siri or GPS navigation App or seen the advances
of Boston Dynamics or Wolfram Alpha or IBM's Watson or Tesla Autodrive,
understands that AI is largely a solved problem today. The big issue is
that these advances will not be permitted to compete with human
populations without a fight. The picture of French cabbies setting cars
afire on the motorway in response to Uber apps being made available in
Paris is a case in point. On Mars, this dynamic does not exist and
everything will be done with a high degree of automation due to very low
populations and very high transport cost of that population. So, labour
costs are far less on ars than on Earth.

The USA spends over $1 trillion per year on homeland security and
overseas operations to secure itself against terror attacks. Europe
spends similar amounts. These costs are trending upward as conditions
worsen in the Middle East and those who can make their way to Europe.
Labor unions, nuclear proliferation, environmental degradation, Mars
doesn't have these problems and never will. Social costs of Mars
operations are less than comparable operations on Earth.

Transport costs are a function of gravity field method of transport
and distance. On Earth we have;

Earth:

$2.24 per gallon petrol

Barge 514 ton miles/gallon 230 ton miles/dollar
Rail 202 ton miles/gallon 90 ton miles/dollar
Truck 59 ton miles/gallon 26 ton miles/dollar
Air 16 miles/gallon/ton 7 ton miles/dollar

Lower gravity (1/3 that of Earth) and lower air drag (1/1,000,000th
that of Earth) and lower energy costs (1/100th that of Earth) make a
huge difference;

Mars

$0.0224 per gallon petrol equivalent

Maglev 1,542 miles/gallon/ton 69,000 ton miles/dollar
Rail 606 miles/gallon/ton 27,000 ton miles/dollar
Truck 357 miles/gallon/ton 7,800 ton miles/dollar
Air 48 miles/gallon/ton 2,100 ton miles/dollar

Now, to project an object from Mars to Earth along a Hohmann transfer
orbit from the surface, requires that is be blasted off the surface at a
speed of 6.1 km/sec. (13,640 mph). A rail gun is 95% efficient at this
task. So, 19.6 giga-joules of energy are required to project one metric
ton from Mars to Earth. That's 148.6 gallons of petrol equivalanet.
That costs $332 per ton paying $2.24 per gallon. Its $3.32 per ton
paying 2.24 cents per gallon.

If you live on a rail line within 2,200 miles of a steel mill on a
rail line connecting, then transport costs might be cheaper for a ton of
steel transported from Mars. However, any steel mill on Mars could send
steel to you on Earth via mass driver if this weren't the case. Since
the labour energy resource and social costs are far cheaper on Mars than
on Earth, then there is no reason to operate steel mills on Earth once
far more efficient steel mills are operating on Mars.

Advantages in obvious resources like steel can be leveraged into
other resources. For example, materials can be sent to Earth Orbit from
which large space stations are constructed within which food and fibre
are grown with automated systems under ideal conditions.







Your cost estimates are so unrealistic. The Mars Sample Return
mission last I heard would cost at least $6 billion
(probably 3 times that much) and take some 5 or 10 years
to return a /few pounds/ from Mars.

You're talking about shipping bulk iron? When iron on Earth
costs $80 per...TON.

Four cents per pound? I mean come on~

Playing the if if if if if game only
produces noise, not realistic future
visions. Especially when every 'if'
is estimated to the best case scenario
....times ten as yours are.







Robots are transforming mining today

http://fortune.com/2015/08/25/intern...ning-industry/

https://www.academia.edu/356502/Appl...ti cal_Review

http://www.eumicon.com/images/EUMICO...yk%20Karas.pdf
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news.../04/325475.htm

Heat shield rock - 98% iron

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_re..._Meteorite.jpg

98% pure iron - created by a meteorite crashing into the iron rich
surface of mars and spewing out pure iron.

General Atomics - MHD Fission Reactor
https://fusion.gat.com/pubs-ext/AnnS...ETC/A23593.pdf

General Atomics - Rail Gun - fires a bullet fast enough to escape
the moon's surface and hit Earth. Can be carried on the back of a
truck, on a ship, or in a rocket.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNLrQhn5nLo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHN-vplJZg

Mach 7 - 2.3 km/sec - exceeds the escape velocity of the Moon. So,
this device carried to the Moon, and powered up, would easily be capable
of driving a lot of mass to Earth dirt cheap.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev0G49jXJX0

I was using old data from mass driver studies done in the 1970s when
I was in school to calculate the quarter mile length of mass drivers on
Mars. New data from rail guns developed and deployed by General Atomics
- shows that they can fire a projectile with a speed of 2.3 km/sec
(5,143 mph)- the escape velocity of the moon - in a length of 12.2
meters (40 feet!). This is an acceleration 4.4x greater than that
achieved by the mass drivers of the 1970s. This implies that a similar
gun 85.8 meters (281.4 ft) long - could be used to project objects off
Mars all the way to Earth. Such a gun, would consist of 8 barrels in a
40 foot container, that would be fitted on the end of the system shown
in the video.

A Mars Colonial Transport sending one of these guns that fire at 36x
per second per barrel, and sporting rounds of 10 kg each deliver 0.36
tons per second during operation. That's 2.84 million tons over a
three month period each synodic period of 2.15 years. 1.32 million tons
per year on average. Each cannon delivers $1.04 billion per year at an
average cost of $0.79 per kg for raw materials.





How much does a large truck and driver on Earth cost?





s

Jonathan wrote:

On 12/18/2016 10:20 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Jonathan wrote:


When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
a truly useful commodity like space solar power
can become practical and the free markets will
have a new reason to build large structures
in space.


It's cheaper to build your solar power plant down here. Again, the
cost of lifting all that stuff from Earth in the first place makes
space-based solar far too expensive. Hell, Earth-based solar is too
expensive right now and space-based costs at least an order of
magnitude more.


The advantage of SSP is that it can beam energy to
places where building a power plant, with all the
infrastructure that requires, isn't practical.


Then those people aren't going to be able to afford $3+ /kW-hr for
power.


For instance to areas too thinly populated to
justify a power plant, too remote to justify
all the roads and rail lines to support a power
plant and so on. And the costs of SSP are up front
in building the satellites, once that's done
it's far easier and cheaper to build new
power networks as it just requires the
receiver, not a new expensive power plant.


It is cheaper to build roads and such than it is to build and launch a
constellation of SPS. It's also much cheaper to just airdrop solar
cells in to each individual who needs power.


Also it can be used to provide peak power demands
at existing plants that need extra power generation.


This is why we have a power grid. Any power company that buys SPS
power at $3+/kW-hr deserves to go broke and have all its management
fired.


So SSP can be sold at peak prices.


Which are around 3% or so of what SPS power costs.


There are all kinds
of things SSP can do that conventional power plants
can't do in terms of accessibility, at least once
the day comes fossil fuel prices reach the
point SSP becomes competitive.


So, sometime around the 1st of Never, then.


Not to mention SSP can be used to power larger satellites
and other orbital power needs.


How's that going to work again? And if it does, why not just build
powerplants on Earth, where they're easy to get at to run and
maintain, and beam the power UP?



And why would a solar power satellite require people?


They are very large structures and large investments
that could need and afford manned support in orbit.
It would seem unlikely such large efforts could be built
and maintained entirely by remote means.


Handwavium is all well and good, but why would they need constant
human support? It seems unlikely that such large efforts could be
built and maintained regardless of how you go about it, but there's no
reason why they'd require people if they could be built.


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 9:29:12 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:

On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 4:20:10 PM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Jonathan wrote:


When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
a truly useful commodity like space solar power
can become practical and the free markets will
have a new reason to build large structures
in space.


It's cheaper to build your solar power plant down here. Again, the
cost of lifting all that stuff from Earth in the first place makes
space-based solar far too expensive. Hell, Earth-based solar is too
expensive right now and space-based costs at least an order of
magnitude more.

And why would a solar power satellite require people?


Inflatable concentrators that focus light on to thin disk solar pumped lasers that use conjugate optics to beam energy reliably and safely to Earth - produce 22 kW of useable power on the ground per kg of payload at GEO. A Falcon Heavy puts 18 tons into GEO sufficient to produce 400 MW of power continuously. The satellite costs $110 million. The Launch $90 million - $200 million altogether. At $0.11 per kWh a 400 MW power satellite operating 8,766 hours per year generats $385 million per year in revenue.


At the price point you give an SPS doesn't produce anything.

Yes it does.

Prices
for SPS power are up around $3 or so, not 11 cents.

Considerable profit is earned at $0.11 per kWh when care is taken to use shorter wavelengths in the visible part of the spectrum, reducing optics and beam steering, and if concentrating thin film devices are used to reduce mass.



--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson

In article ,
says...

On 12/18/2016 10:20 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Jonathan wrote:


When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
a truly useful commodity like space solar power
can become practical and the free markets will
have a new reason to build large structures
in space.


It's cheaper to build your solar power plant down here. Again, the
cost of lifting all that stuff from Earth in the first place makes
space-based solar far too expensive. Hell, Earth-based solar is too
expensive right now and space-based costs at least an order of
magnitude more.




The advantage of SSP is that it can beam energy to
places where building a power plant, with all the
infrastructure that requires, isn't practical.

True. The military would want this in order to reduce the amount of
fuel it needs to transport.

For instance to areas too thinly populated to
justify a power plant, too remote to justify
all the roads and rail lines to support a power
plant and so on. And the costs of SSP are up front
in building the satellites, once that's done
it's far easier and cheaper to build new
power networks as it just requires the
receiver, not a new expensive power plant.

Outside of the military, this is going to depend heavily on the details.
In some remote areas it may make sense. But, I would not be willing to
bet that this would exceed military beamed power spending.

Also it can be used to provide peak power demands
at existing plants that need extra power generation.
So SSP can be sold at peak prices. There are all kinds
of things SSP can do that conventional power plants
can't do in terms of accessibility, at least once
the day comes fossil fuel prices reach the
point SSP becomes competitive.

Is this true in the US considering the amount of fracking that is going
on and the plentiful, and cheap, natural gas that is is producing?

Not to mention SSP can be used to power larger satellites
and other orbital power needs.

How useful is this really? Even "worst case" (e.g. LEO), you're just
trading solar cells and rechargeable batteries for a microwave antenna
and a smaller battery (to handle very brief power interruptions).
Beamed satellite power also means dependence on an outside power source
that will be an ongoing cost.

The devil really is in the details here.

And why would a solar power satellite require people?



They are very large structures and large investments
that could need and afford manned support in orbit.
It would seem unlikely such large efforts could be built
and maintained entirely by remote means.

Again, the devil is in the details. Most of what is needed could likely
be done with robotics and tele-operation. Time hopefully isn't an issue
since the design will surely be multiply redundant for all critical
systems (again, primary initial customers being military). Anything
requiring a human could be done during a scheduled "man-tended" visit.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

In article ,
says...

In article ,
says...

Jeff Findley wrote:


Hell, John Deere is working on an all electric tractor ("full-sized",
not some tiny sub-scale prototype) which will improve efficiency and
overall reliability.


And this is actually a great application for electrics if the thing
isn't significantly more expensive than a regular tractor. It could
plow or whatever all day at the usual slow tractor speeds, then go
plug in and recharge at night.

From what I've read, it will go for 4 hours before needing charged. So,
you'd need to take three breaks to get a solid 16 hours of work in (e.g.
harvesting). That's not too unreasonable, but might be a negative when
trying to sell it. Higher reliability would be a huge plus though.
Breaking down while doing something fairly time/weather critical like
planting is a bad thing.

I looked it up again last night and the 4 hours of working time was
correct. But, I neglected to note that it will take 3 hours to
recharge. :-(

So, yea, battery swaps and/or autonomous operation would seem to be
quite necessary here. When you're planting or harvesting, you're
typically doing it under fairly extreme time pressure. The farmers in
my extended family are usually in their tractor or combine for every
waking hour during those times. Except for very short nature breaks,
you're living in the cab of that machine until all the fields are done
being planted or harvested.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

William Mook wrote:

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 2:27:33 PM UTC+13, Jonathan wrote:
On 12/18/2016 9:17 PM, William Mook wrote:

There are insufficient resources on Earth today to sustain everyone
at a high living standard. So, we must either establish a repressive
governance world wide to allocate those limited resources in a
sustainable way, or we must reduce populations, or we must reduce living
standards to do as you say. All three avenues are being pursued at the
present time.

I've been hearing that for a long time, it's a myth.

Its not a myth. You've heard it for a long time because its true.



All extreme scarcity is artificially induced and maintained by those who benefit from that scarcity. All dictators are backed by the money interests who benefit from the existence of those dictators. Saddam Hussein was backed by the USA to scare up the price of crude whenever it lagged.


So Mookie insists out one side of his mouth that there are not enough
resources on Earth while out of the other he claims that scarcity is a
plot. Phew, what a loony!

[Yeah, I chopped out a thousand lines or so of MookSpew.]


--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine

William Mook wrote:

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 9:29:12 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:

On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 4:20:10 PM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Jonathan wrote:


When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
a truly useful commodity like space solar power
can become practical and the free markets will
have a new reason to build large structures
in space.


It's cheaper to build your solar power plant down here. Again, the
cost of lifting all that stuff from Earth in the first place makes
space-based solar far too expensive. Hell, Earth-based solar is too
expensive right now and space-based costs at least an order of
magnitude more.

And why would a solar power satellite require people?


Inflatable concentrators that focus light on to thin disk solar pumped lasers that use conjugate optics to beam energy reliably and safely to Earth - produce 22 kW of useable power on the ground per kg of payload at GEO. A Falcon Heavy puts 18 tons into GEO sufficient to produce 400 MW of power continuously. The satellite costs $110 million. The Launch $90 million - $200 million altogether. At $0.11 per kWh a 400 MW power satellite operating 8,766 hours per year generats $385 million per year in revenue.


At the price point you give an SPS doesn't produce anything.

Yes it does.


Only if someone gifts the whole thing to you.

Prices
for SPS power are up around $3 or so, not 11 cents.

Considerable profit is earned at $0.11 per kWh when care is taken to use shorter wavelengths in the visible part of the spectrum, reducing optics and beam steering, and if concentrating thin film devices are used to reduce mass.


Bull****. See "Space-Based Solar Power As an Opportunity for
Strategic Security", Report to the Director, National Security Space
Office.


--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson

On Wednesday, December 21, 2016 at 10:32:18 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 2:27:33 PM UTC+13, Jonathan wrote:
On 12/18/2016 9:17 PM, William Mook wrote:

There are insufficient resources on Earth today to sustain everyone
at a high living standard. So, we must either establish a repressive
governance world wide to allocate those limited resources in a
sustainable way, or we must reduce populations, or we must reduce living
standards to do as you say. All three avenues are being pursued at the
present time.

I've been hearing that for a long time, it's a myth.

Its not a myth. You've heard it for a long time because its true.



All extreme scarcity is artificially induced and maintained by those who benefit from that scarcity. All dictators are backed by the money interests who benefit from the existence of those dictators. Saddam Hussein was backed by the USA to scare up the price of crude whenever it lagged.


So Mookie insists out one side of his mouth that there are not enough
resources on Earth

True. The limited resources on Earth relative to the resources off world limits the amount that can be usefully invested without excessive environmental disruption.

while out of the other he claims that scarcity is a
plot.

True. Those who manage the capital use technocratic means to deploy that capital and they take the aforementioned limits to growth into account in that deployment.

Phew, what a loony!

Well, only if you're foolish enough to read the two statements as mutually exclusive. They are not.

It takes capital to create wealth. Since capital is restricted to an elite class of individuals and economic speech is restricted only to that class, and all follow a strict technocratic logic, which is demonstrably the case today, that class limits their invesments in ways that ehnace their power and influence in the face of natural limits to growth.

[Yeah, I chopped out a thousand lines or so of MookSpew.]

Yeah, the behaviour of someone who is in denial - when they're not being angry.. lol.

The five stages of loss,

denial,
anger,
bargaining,
depression and
acceptance

These are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with things we lose.

You've lost because your entire world is built on a fantasy. When you can you ignore that fact, when you cannot you get angry. You have yet to have reality seep into your consciousness.


--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine