What if we find a new Earth?

"John Ordover" wrote in message
om...

Again, still more on electromagnetism and manufaturing. Nothing on
transportation. VCRs are cheap, btw, because they are going out of
style, as they are being replaced by DVD players.

Which are also extremely cheap.

The fact that I can buy a fully functional DVD player with all the bells and
whistles I might want for under $70 is pretty damn amazing.

"John Ordover" wrote in message
om...

Thing is, all those advances you list come from two things - the
discovery of electromagnetism and our refinment of its potential, and
modern mass-manufacturing techniques. We've about run out the
potential of both. Not much room to grow there.

We've still got a lot we can do with electromagnetism. Our understanding of
quantum effects and the use of them is only beginning.

And it's not entirely impossible we may be able to do with gravity in the
next century what we did with EM in the last.


There's still a lot of room to grow in biology, but that won't get us
to another system.

Oh?

I can think of at least three ways it might.

(John Ordover) wrote:

...And we know from
several centuries' worth of experience that big surprises show
up every decade or three.

Name one in the last forty years.

The nonzero energy content of a pure vacuum.

Oh?

I can think of at least three ways it might

If you drastically lengthen man's life, that might get him to a star. What are
your other ideas?

"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote in message ...
"John Ordover" wrote in message
om...

Again, still more on electromagnetism and manufaturing. Nothing on
transportation. VCRs are cheap, btw, because they are going out of
style, as they are being replaced by DVD players.

Which are also extremely cheap.

The fact that I can buy a fully functional DVD player with all the bells and
whistles I might want for under $70 is pretty damn amazing.

See, I don't see that as all that amazing, since DVDs all come back to
manipulating electromagnetics in various ways, and we've gotten really
good at that since we discovered it quite a while back.

What we need to get to space is a breakthrough in moving from place to
place that is as powerful a paradigme as electromagnetics is for
gadgets.

(Alan Anderson) wrote in message ...
(John Ordover) wrote:

...And we know from
several centuries' worth of experience that big surprises show
up every decade or three.

Name one in the last forty years.

The nonzero energy content of a pure vacuum.

Which we have put to practical use how?

We've made a lot of impractical discoveries. Name one that has
immediate impact on the level of nucleonics.

(G EddieA95) wrote in message ...
Oh?

I can think of at least three ways it might

If you drastically lengthen man's life, that might get him to a star. What are
your other ideas?

No, it won't, because it will remain unprofitable to send him there,
as opposed to a robot probe.

"John Ordover" wrote in message
om...
We've still got a lot we can do with electromagnetism. Our
understanding of
quantum effects and the use of them is only beginning.

Possibly, but no product has come out of it so far.


Bzzt, try again. Several products have come from it. And no, I'm not about
to do your homework.



I proposed that elsewhere as a good example of the kind of
paradigmatic shift we need to get us into space. If we can turn
gravity up and down, on and off, that's a very powerful ability. It
would also be great if we could turn inertia on and off.

It would be nice, but not necessary for LEO. We've already proven that the
basic chemistry to get us there is fairly cheap.

(John Ordover) wrote

And we know from
several centuries' worth of experience that big surprises show
up every decade or three.

Name one in the last forty years.

At the fundamental level, mostly in high energy physics and cosmology:
inflation, dark matter and energy, accelerating Hubble "constant", the
success of the Standard Model and discovery of its limitations. In
biology, the DNA polymerase chain reaction comes to mind, various
gene engineering developments, vastly improved imaging technologies at
micro and macro scales. In solar system studies, water on Mars
and Europa.

"John Ordover" wrote:
Again, still more on electromagnetism and manufaturing. Nothing on
transportation. VCRs are cheap, btw, because they are going out of
style, as they are being replaced by DVD players.

Oh, John, John, John. Have you priced a DVD player
recently? There are now several brands with SRPs
under $60. If you wait for a sale you can get a
decent DVD player for under $50 easily, and if you
buy used or wholesale they are practically free.

To take a few other examples of consumer goods which
are falling dramatically in price: printers, hard
drives, monitors, CD-ROM drives, DVD-ROM drives,
CD-R/RW drives, DVD-R drives, and laptops. For each of
those you can get a damned decent unit for a fraction of
the price an equivalent unit would have cost even a year
ago, let alone 5 years ago. Though going back 5 years
ago, you couldn't buy the things I mentioned with the
capabilities they have today at any price. A high-end
laptop costs less today than a mid-range desktop computer
did only 5 years ago, and the laptop has much better
performance than even top of the line desktops from 2 \
years ago. Just a few years ago I spent nearly $300
on an 8x CD-R drive, now you can get 52x CD-R drives for
well under $100. And that's just in computers, prices
are dropping for most consumer goods across the board.