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#511
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
Hop David wrote: Hop David wrote: Pat Flannery wrote: (snip) Do you honestly believe miners are a bunch of clumsy morons? You arrogant, ignorant, little prick. I DID NOT WRITE THAT. You have just defined and damned yourself with a outright lie and fabrication that reflects far more upon your character than you will ever inflect on mine by such a loathsome and cowardly tactic. If you claim that I wrote that, then I want to see the entire posting of mine it appeared in, and a Google link to the same. Failing that, I want a personal apology from you or I intend to file a complaint to your ISP. No, on second thought I won't. Frankly, you're not worth the effort. So I questioned your conception of humanity in relation to the future of mankind in space, and rather than summoning a response to such a disagreement, you have resorted to outright lies. If nothing else, this certainly shows how tenuous your own belief in your espoused ideas is - as brittle as a eggshell, as strong as a soap bubble. I'll tell you one thing though... you just made a far better and far more convincing argument in that brief posting that the people who hold the belief in the near-divine future of humanity somewhere out in space are a lot closer to followers of a religious cult than rational individuals than I could have done with several thousand words. O'Neill's book really did screw up a lot of people very badly. You among them, obviously. Somebody in the psychological field really should do a study on all this. They could make their whole career with a seminal paper on the things that led individuals to a world view like this from a psychological perspective. Utopianism, science replacing religion as a new faith, and a desire to literally ascend into the heaven where everything will be perfect and untainted by the dross and vulgarity of the world one is living in, without that unpleasant necessity of dying first. ;-) Pat |
#512
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 06:38:18 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote: I DID NOT WRITE THAT. ....As long as this thread has progressed, I'm starting to see more of this happening. Apparently some of you guys aren't watching your attribs while trying to trim your quotes. Keep a cooler head about yourselves, and watch those attribs before you flame each other for the wrong reasons! OM -- ]=====================================[ ] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [ ] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [ ] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [ ]=====================================[ |
#513
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
Eivind Kjorstad wrote in news:fguvti$a6e$1
@news.netpower.no: John Schilling skreiv: There's a difference between mechanization and robotics. Almost none of the machinery used in modern mining would qualify as robotic. Is that then, in your opinion, a difference of principle, or just a difference of degree ? Machines, very few of them robots, have *assisted* many people in mines. What separates a non-robot machine from a robot-machine ? How much human supervision is a robot-machine allowed until it reaches the point where it becomes a non-robot-machine? Does it make any difference if that supervision is provided at a console next to the machine down the mine, or at a console at the surface, or at a console some miles away? |
#514
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
bealoid skreiv:
Eivind Kjorstad wrote in news:fguvti$a6e$1 @news.netpower.no: John Schilling skreiv: There's a difference between mechanization and robotics. Almost none of the machinery used in modern mining would qualify as robotic. Is that then, in your opinion, a difference of principle, or just a difference of degree ? Machines, very few of them robots, have *assisted* many people in mines. What separates a non-robot machine from a robot-machine ? How much human supervision is a robot-machine allowed until it reaches the point where it becomes a non-robot-machine? Does it make any difference if that supervision is provided at a console next to the machine down the mine, or at a console at the surface, or at a console some miles away? I don't know, that's why I asked John, what exactly he considers the principal difference. In -my- opinion there is no hard line between "machine" and "robot", it's just a question of degree. Some machines are -more- roboty, other machines are -less- roboty. Eivind Kjørstad |
#515
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
Just a question--how much are things simplified if we can assume simplified surface mining techniques are used? For example, for lunar mining only loose dust/regolith is used. Maybe the lunar material is collected using a hexagonal formation of inverted funnels. A puff of oxygen gas throws up a bunch of lunar dust/regolith. Around the "impact" is a formation of six upward pointed funnels, so dust/regolith collects at the center. Since there's no atmosphere to worry about, even fine dust particles will quickly fall down back into the collection funnels. At the base of each funnel are heating elements to begin processing the ore; as the ore near the bottom is melted it flows into heated pipes for the rest of the processing. This mechanism may be less efficient than scoops, but the reduced maintenance issues may be worth it. The only moving parts are valves for the gas puffers and wheels for moving from one place to another. Isaac Kuo |
#516
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
Eivind Kjorstad wrote:
bealoid skreiv: Eivind Kjorstad wrote in news:fguvti$a6e$1 : John Schilling skreiv: There's a difference between mechanization and robotics. Almost none of the machinery used in modern mining would qualify as robotic. Is that then, in your opinion, a difference of principle, or just a difference of degree ? Machines, very few of them robots, have *assisted* many people in mines. What separates a non-robot machine from a robot-machine ? How much human supervision is a robot-machine allowed until it reaches the point where it becomes a non-robot-machine? Does it make any difference if that supervision is provided at a console next to the machine down the mine, or at a console at the surface, or at a console some miles away? I don't know, that's why I asked John, what exactly he considers the principal difference. Can't speak for John. But from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot # can sense its environment, and manipulate or interact with things in it # has some degree of intelligence or ability to make choices based on the environment, or automatic control / preprogrammed sequence But these criteria would exclude teleoperated "robots". A backhoe arm is a form of teleoperated arm and not many would regard that as robotic. It seems to me its an ambiguous term. But whatever name you give to a machine, John's point still stands: Where are the working mines with no people in it because they've all been replaced by machines? There are none. And it will stay that way for sometime to come. Hop |
#517
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
... That was the argument for the Shuttle also, but the turnaround time of an orbiter and restacking for relaunch never came down to even a tenth of what they thought it was going to be. Exactly. Rather than saying that NASA was wrong about the turn-around time, and also wrong about the cost/lb, we might more charitably say that the unexpectedly low launch rate kept them from even approaching the hoped-for cost/lb improvements. Lack of payload volume was only secondary to the amount of man-hours required to get a orbiter back home, checking it out, recertification it for flight, and stacking it again f or relaunch. Yep, that's the problem all right. And fission reactors are a lot cheaper way of getting the power than SPS is. Perhaps. But the cost for energy from fission would be higher if the costs of waste disposal and reactor decommissioning were fairly factored in. If they ever get fusion to work, kiss the whole concept goodbye. Maybe. Fusion might turn out to be so expensive that SBSP could still compete. That's a virtually inexhaustible source of power with no radioactive waste. Let's say "considerably less radioactive waste". Give me an explanation of how that's done from a technical point of view. Show me a concept of making a chemical rocket that has a isp of around 1,000. You seem to assume that the cost/lb is primarily a function of ISP. That may not be the case. Bet you didn't picture a CPU that had a multi-gigahertz processing capability twenty-five years ago, or a hard drive that could store 500 megs... and have those both sitting inside of something of around two cubic feet in size in your living room either. Yes, but has any of that lead to a robot that you can tell to go upstairs and get your glasses? That's the kind of thing we were anticipating we'd have by the 21st Century. -- Regards, Mike Combs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- By all that you hold dear on this good Earth I bid you stand, Men of the West! Aragorn |
#518
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 08:50:29 +0100, Eivind Kjorstad
wrote: John Schilling skreiv: There's a difference between mechanization and robotics. Almost none of the machinery used in modern mining would qualify as robotic. Is that then, in your opinion, a difference of principle, or just a difference of degree ? Machines, very few of them robots, have *assisted* many people in mines. What separates a non-robot machine from a robot-machine ? Classically, it's a robot if it has the ability to sense and respond to the external environment. Pragmatically, it only counts if the "sense and respond to the external environment" bit applies to the normal exercise of the primary function of the device; safety overrides and/or feedback control of secondary functions need not apply. A car does not become a robot when you add anti-lock brakes; it becomes a robot when it steers itself down the road. And at present, robot mining machines are at about the same state of the art as robot cars. The real work, in transportation and mining, is done by manually controlled heavy machinery. -- *John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, * *Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" * *Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition * *White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute * * for success" * *661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition * |
#519
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Nov 8, 9:38 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
Hop David wrote: Hop David wrote: Pat Flannery wrote: (snip) Do you honestly believe miners are a bunch of clumsy morons? You arrogant, ignorant, little prick. I DID NOT WRITE THAT. No, you didn't and I believe Hop was expressing regret at what he wrote: Quote from Hop: "I've always regarded you as a gentle soul and a wonderful story teller. It distresses me to read some of my replies to you in this thread. " |
#520
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Nov 9, 1:19 am, IsaacKuo wrote:
Just a question--how much are things simplified if we can assume simplified surface mining techniques are used? That's a good point, and something I've never considered before. Asteroid mining may throw up some much dirt that the rock disappears in a haze of rubble. Potentially quite hazardous, if it gets into moving parts and coats solar panels. Maybe the dust could be dealt with by using electric fields to contain it. The Hayabusa probe may not even have been able to get a sample from the asteroid it visited. |
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