Wild Bill

Every mass has a centre of gravity, even if it has a lumpy shape. Once it spins it is not that hard to keep it stable. That's how gyroscopes work. There may be some shaping needed so that it stays stable under acceleration but not a lot. The thrust will be very small, just continuous. Steering thrust requirements should be minimal. If the overall shape is too irregular you could just leave it and pick another one. If it is only a bit of trouble then some TNT equivalent should do the job. Also, if you are going to do some mining and hollowing for living space you have to design for a stable mass as your result anyway. These are not impossibilities, just minor aggravations. Again, I guess we all would like to be younger, especially if we could keep what we know now!

Well, as I said, maybe not that many would want to jump off and settle a planet anyway! Plus, the asteroid can be spun, for centrifugal force to act as a substitute for gravity. A diameter of a few miles would not need a very fast spin rate to give something close to a 1 g acceleration. Taking an "elevator" down to the centre of the asteroid would give a steadily decreasing sense of gravity, which could be very useful for certain manufacturing processes and perhaps old folks. As for payback for earthbound investors, perhaps initially the craft would have to do something profitable for a few years to earn its "freedom", so to speak. There are all kinds of things that not only are cheaper to make in zero g but are of better quality, quality better than is even possible on earth. NASA experiments have found all kinds of things that could make a good buck, not the least of which is ball bearings so perfectly round as to make the best produced on Earth look as lumpy as a golf ball! It sounds like a trivial thing but ball bearings are used in almost everything that turns or spins. The quality of the bearing makes a big difference on the amount of friction to be overcome. It could easily mean an extra 10 mpg or even more in a transmission, or something similar in an electric motor. Near frictionless bearings would save an unbelievable amount of wasted energy! Plus there's the worth of the metals and minerals in the asteroid itself. Space mining will be hugely profitable once it starts happening. If your miners live there and aren't looking for a ride home surely there will be cost savings that can be applied to paying off the craft "debt"/ There is good evidence that some of the moons of Jupiter, Saturn and the other gas giants hold incredibly large pools of liquid methane and other hydrocarbons. These will always be in demand to an energy hungry Earth. It wouldn't be that big a feat of engineering to scoop up or pump up a LOT of this liquid "oil" to bring back to near-Earth orbit. The cost of transport would be mice nuts in total. The craft would slowly accelerate in a very long term orbit. Who cares if it takes 5 years or more? It makes the cost peanuts since little energy is spent on propellant and the people on the asteroid are never intending to come home anyway! There's really nothing new we need to invent. Just apply what we already know. There would also be no shortage of volunteers. Computers would mean continual education available for the crew colonists, plus no doubt there would be some astronomical and scientific experimental work that could be done for more profit. Perhaps for the first decade or two, while the asteroid is being dug out and readied, it could serve as a near-Earth base, rotating for gravity, for handling space mining materials from asteroids brought back to be smelted and refined in orbit, leaving no "dirtiness" spoiling the Earth from refining on the ground. There would no doubt be several such bases working at any given time. When they were sufficiently well outfitted they would "graduate" into "tankers", moving in orbits of several years out to the big gas giant planets to tap into the liquid methane and bring it home. There could be long trains of these tankers, spaced a few weeks or months apart. So much for any debates about "Peak Oil"! Work on preparing an asteroid craft would still procede all the time it is in use as a tanker. Every few years it would be back home, to receive anymore materials it needed to become self-sufficient. Eventually, it would be ready, its "indenture" paid off. It could then set out for the stars! The craft would never truly be out of touch with Earth. With radio and laser, information could flow both ways. The time lag would keep increasing. Proxima Centauri is over 4 years away for a radio transmission! The lag would only keep increasing. Still, we wouldn't need a comfortable conversation. It would be more like a long stream each way of what new things had been observed or figured out. Man, I wish I was younger!

Why should that be so? Only if we intended to physically keep returning! Long before we settle other planets and asteroids in the solar system we would be capable of making something like an asteroid base move under power. With solar and/or nuclear power plus a self-sustaining environmental system a large asteroid could support a surprisingly large population. Add in even a very modest ion drive engine and there would be nothing to stop that asteroid from heading out to the nearest star. It would take many generations but eventually they would arrive at another system, perhaps with other planets suitable for colonization. If so, some of the population might choose to become colonists and live on another world. If not, it would be no big deal. The asteroid would just keep moving on! To another star and another. For most of the people involved would likely to prefer living in that asteroid. It would be home. Earth would be only a memory, something in the history books. It would suggest harsh gravity, abusive climates and worst of all, germs! Why change the safe and clean life in an interstellar colony craft for that? Population is easy to plan with contraceptives but even if the population grows too large, there would be no problem. Simply find another asteroid and build another colony craft! The beauty of such craft is that you take your material resources with you. An asteroid ten or more miles in diameter has a HUGE volume of mass, with LOTS of metals, minerals and perhaps even water! Once the process has started, in a few hundreds of thousands of years Mankind would have spread out across a good portion of our galaxy. It would be a geometric progression, like doubling a penny every day.

True, except that you are dealing with a neighbour who has a hobby of constantly playing with matches! Is it a positive move to keep supporting him? Should you keep rebuilding his house for him - a house that gets more expensive every time? A house that in many ways is better than yours? It's a complicated issue...

Max, you make a great deal of sense! Actually, I am continually struck by how you virtually always make sense. Even when we disagree I have to respect your viewpoint as informed. And you an NDP'er! Max, I will be 60 this fall and I can truthfully say I have never met an NDP supporter like you! At any NDP functions, you must be very lonely!

I thought we flogged this one to death before, August. For some reason, you seem to desperately seize any chance to paint Quebec in a better light for the Churchill Falls deal. Your premise is valid but only in an academic sense. Certainly Quebec is entitled to some of the pie for transmission lines across its territory, but that has never been disputed. The problem is the sheer immensity of the cut for Quebec compared to Newfoundland where the power was generated! Newfoundland gets a nickel and Quebec gets 95 cents, for decades and decades! THAT'S why there has been hard feelings! What's more, it's not as if it was a simple case of caveat emptor. Federal pressure was used to make Newfoundland accept the deal. Whatever, even if everyone woke up tomorrow and said "OH! We've been wrong all these years. Certainly Quebec was always entitled to 95% of the pie! It was simply business!" it doesn't change the fact that Newfoundland now feels that cables to Nova Scotia are much more competitive as a route to bring power to market. If Quebec is not competitive then too bad! That too is just business!

Here we go. I can barely afford my energy bills now! I guess I am going to freeze in the dark, with nothing but the cold comfort I made SOMEONE ELSE feel all warm and fuzzy for saving the planet!

CC, you are quite right that the mistake in itself was not a big deal. We all make malapropisms, mistakes in grammar and false words like "irregardless". That was never why I challenged WWWTT on it. I was pointing out how he would try to deny his mistake and insist he was correct! The fact that he would do so says things about his maturity and ego and an illustration of how he tries to debate. Anyone else (well, except possibly a few others here) would have simply laughed and said "mea culpa". Perhaps anyone else would have done a quick google to be sure. WWWTT didn't even do that! Someone else had to do it for him. It's not that big a deal, agreed. Still, perhaps WWWTT should ponder it a mite. It's all part of learning and improving as we grow older.

Why do I bother? Gas is also a byproduct of heating or burning oil. Oil is much more easily transportable to fertilizer plants than natural gas. Did you actually read more than one link? Or did you just keep scanning for something that would make it look like you were right in the first place? I give up! It's just not worth it. I'm going back to putting you on ignore.

Thanks for the link! Now I understand the confusion. After actually reading the whole story I see that first off, expediate is an adjective. WWTT used it as a verb, I believe. "Verb expediate Common misconstruction of expedite." Irregardless (sic) I think I had every right to be confused.

That is truly disgusting! Also very low brow and partisan.

I still don't know what you are talking about. Where you banned? If so, I had nothing to do with it. I haven't reported anyone for months.

Why didn't you just do a quick google? There are all kinds of links! Try this one for a start: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html "The Green Revolution In the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture underwent a drastic transformation commonly referred to as the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution resulted in the industrialization of agriculture. Part of the advance resulted from new hybrid food plants, leading to more productive food crops. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%.4 That is a tremendous increase in the amount of food energy available for human consumption. This additional energy did not come from an increase in incipient sunlight, nor did it result from introducing agriculture to new vistas of land. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation. The Green Revolution increased the energy flow to agriculture by an average of 50 times the energy input of traditional agriculture.5 In the most extreme cases, energy consumption by agriculture has increased 100 fold or more.6 In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994).7 Agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows: · 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer · 19% for the operation of field machinery · 16% for transportation · 13% for irrigation · 08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed) · 05% for crop drying · 05% for pesticide production · 08% miscellaneous" Man, what do they teach in schools these days?

Yeah, the thing about older technology is that it is far easier to maintain and service, particularly if you are stranded out in the boonies. Imagine being way out in the bush and your late model truck blows the onboard computer. Start walking!

Just tossing an extra point in here, guyser. When the Queen was a young girl during WWII she became a fully qualified driver and motor pool mechanic in the British Army. Even today I'm sure she would have no problem taking about a carburetor. Assuming you could find a carburetor today, of course!

It would work better if you would read my whole post and not just grab one point out of context. Did I not say something about fertilizer? You do know how fertilizer works, don't you? You do have an idea of just how much is used to maintain the production levels of the food that fills our supermarkets? You do understand that take the fertilizers away tomorrow and yields would immediately drop to a mere pittance? Once again you are doing what Moonbox pointed out. I don't think you are trolling. I think you just don't know any better!

WWWTT, while you are getting all "holier than thou" you should ponder the fact that Moonbox is right! And he is FAR from the only one to feel this way! You probably don't even realize what you have been doing. It's easy to grow up with friends and family and think we are good at arguments. A debating environment like MLW is a whole different fish kettle! It can be like vacant lot baseball and the big leagues. To this day my ex wife still thinks she is good at winning arguments. She is, but not in the way she thinks. She doesn't win with logic, evidence and reason. She just gets so shrill and aggravating that people just give in to shut her up! The poor women doesn't even know the difference between the different ways of winning.

The answer is that BOTH management and labour share responsibility for problems, CC. At least in a union situation. In a small private company, if a worker keeps making mistakes the boss will have to address the problem if he wants to stay profitable and keep everyone's paycheck from bouncing. It may mean a bit of extra training. It may mean the worker is just not suited for that particular job and he will give him a different one. Or he may just have a bad worker. If he can't be made to show a better attitude then you sack him! In a union shop, it is MUCH more complicated! First off, let's suppose the manager is lucky and the employee HAS a good work ethic! A bit of observation and perhaps some hints may be enough. A bit of retraining can be done if truly necessary. Still, likely the union steward will immediately get involved anyway! He will begin by stating the manager has no right to question the worker's abilities. He will insist that any problems are the direct result of management having poorly thought out the job process or in sufficient FORMAL training! Management will be expected to give the employee a formal instruction course, meaning anything from a few days to a few weeks. On company time, of course. If the problem is actually the worker has a bad attitude, the union steward will just defend him all the harder. If management tries to transfer the worker to another job there may be other problems. Is there another job? The company cannot displace another worker - that too is not allowed. Even equal pay may not be enough. There may be differences in physical effort. The process can be so long, stretched out and aggravating that many companies get lazy and just try to avoid the confrontations. Of course, the quality problems don't simply vanish. In such situations they actually will get worse. Why not? There is no correction to worry about. That was often the way it was in the "old days". Then came wave after wave of better quality imports and customers began to vote with their feet. Which car company has the highest level of customer satisfaction today? Toyota! Please don't try to say I am exaggerating. My father was a union steel worker and would tell us of how some guys would deliberately break machinery in order to get some hours of idle time sitting around! We would hear of how someone was, in my dad's opinion anyway, the laziest and poorest worker ever hired would successfully resist any attempt by the company to address him as a problem, with the aid of the union. I used to have a neighbour who was also a union steelworker. He had not worked in years, being listed as disabled. I watched him build an above ground pool in his back yard. He held some great parties! I would watch from my own back yard and wow! That man was a fantastic dancer! When I worked at Westinghouse there were a few bad apples. They were always the ones that would bring their job to a halt over a dispute with a WHMIS issue, or something to do with health and safety. It was never a valid issue but always something nit-picking and ridiculous but the steward would jump in and as much as 3 days could be wasted at a time! The problem for management is that even if they are absolutely on the side of right it doesn't matter. Sometimes they have a militant union that will fight them to the point of a walkout and beyond! This costs an incredible amount of lost time and the temptation to just let it slide is overwhelming. I am not trying to say that the majority of union workers are bad apples. The problem is that only a few can cause real problems and in virtually ALL cases their union will vigorously defend them! Like most things in real life, the argument is not digital. The union workers are not all bad and management is not all good but the converse is also true. Black and white positions in such arguments are just fantasy and blind partisanship.

That is a better point than perhaps you realize, WWWTT. If the "eco-warriors" were successful, they would drastically cut supply today! However, alternatives are NOT going to be available by the next weekend! Like it or not, we are dependent right now on adequate supplies of oil not just for transportation but for all those other things, like plastics and most important, fertilizer! Plastics are not just bags that choke sea turtles. They are also used in medical applications, like hip and knee replacements. Fertilizers of course, help feed us! So if the green movement won the war tomorrow we would all starve! One positive thing about the status quo today is that going green is a slow war. This gives time to adapt. The dirty sources slowly become more expensive, making green alternatives more profitable or at least, affordable. Some politicians are blessedly ignorant of the situation, as witness McGuinty paying people up to 80 cents per kilowatt for wind and solar generation against traditional sources at 5-6 cents per kw. If Ontario were to go fully alternative tomorrow the lights would go out across the province. Not because the grid would fail but simply because only a few rich folks could afford it!

Once again, this is why I am skeptical of such studies. Almost always they are flawed in the manner you describe. They restrict the factors to prevent any contradictions. I used to think this was deliberate to skew the results in favour of an agenda but I have come to a simpler explanation. The people involved just don't know any better! They are products of a system that no longer teaches people critical or scientific thinking. The centre cannot hold...

Well, your silence confirms my suspicion and your post raises some more! What the hell are you talking about?

Michael, that is one of those things that are incredibly easy to say but almost impossible to do. I think you would have to be in such an environment to understand. I guess we just have two different perspectives.

If only it were a rational world! I have little to no argument with your points as to what CAN be done! The problem is that the decisions as to what to DO are political and thus never seem to work! Politicians usually have no idea what can work and don't care. They only care about what ideas are popular and thus might bring them votes. Back in the early 90's during Bob Rae's NDP government in Ontario, there was much discussion as to what to do with all our garbage, particularly that from Toronto, which was the lion's share by a quantum leve. Rae's environmental minister was a lady named Ruth Grier. The NDP had previously hitched their star to a belief among various environmental groups that incineration of garbage was bad, all the time, in every case, by any method, with no exceptions! So Ruth made that the official policy of Ontario under the NDP. Now, it was all very well to take that stand but meanwhile the garbage was beginning to pile up to skyscraper heights. They had to do SOMETHING with it! There was just so much that any recycling programs would have been too little too late. Then a company appeared from America, that had been incinerating garbage in many American cities. They used a new plasma furnace techology that had been proven to be extremely clean. They had videotapes of plants in southern cities with green grass and trees all around, looking clean as a whip. They wanted to do the same for Toronto and offered to fly Ruth and as many minions as she felt she needed down to one of these installations to see for themselves. She would have been welcome to bring along her own technicians to measure the air and inspect for how "green" their plant was operating. Ruth absolutely refused to go look! She simply retreated to their earlier political stand that all incineration was bad, no matter what kind and with what technology. Unless you can get the "eco-warriors" on side, who are notoriously NOT engineers or scientists but rather arts an poli-sci majors who have no understanding of the science and technology involved, you will not get the political support necessary to allow the technologies to be used. It doesn't matter if they WORK if the people who have the power of decision making can't understand them or already have a contrary agenda.

Michael, are you saying that a worker cannot help but always do a job just as well as the day before, or just as well as any other worker on the line? This is a very old socialist premise - that all workers are equally skilled and motivated, that everything is just a matter of training, which of course is the responsibility of management. This is absolute bunk! Some people are always better than others at certain jobs. Some people give more of a damn about doing a good job. Some people are just naturally talented at some things. Some people are just useless at certain tasks. Don't believe me? Just let me be your cook!

I did say it is an OLD example, guyser! You are picking at my model and not my point!