The World's First Trillionaire

[GostHacked]

I have a source that says about $4 Trillion to end poverty.

Zero population growth is a good idea, I'm not sure what harebrained new world order plot you're linking this to though...

Gates is advocating for population reduction to save the planet, instead of chaning how we live. He is doing this by 'planned parenthood' vaccines and other methods. He states that in his TED talks. It's not new world order stuff. it is real world stuff that IS happening right now.

I know this is off topic so I will say this once and then move on to the main topic at hand: Gates is also invovled in releasing genetically modified mosquitos to combat malaria. Has anyone thought that through at all? Gates is also investing a lot of money into geo-engineering and companies like Monsantos.

But overall a trillionare means money is not worth as much as it used to be. and will continue to devalue so you will need more dollars to buy that certain product.

[Michael Hardner]

Gates is advocating for population reduction to save the planet, instead of chaning how we live.

I know this is off topic so I will say this once and then move on to the main topic at hand: Gates is also invovled in releasing genetically modified mosquitos to combat malaria. Has anyone thought that through at all? Gates is also investing a lot of money into geo-engineering and companies like Monsantos.

Sounds like a plan to me...

[Bonam]

I see engineering as a iterative process where designs are put into the field, monitored and refined. The are cases where getting it right the first time is important (e.g. nuclear plants) but these cases depend on a infinite supply of replacement components. Sending humans on journeys to planets that will take decades - if not centuries it not likely to be viable because of the time frames involved make iterative engineering design impossible. Of course, such constraints go away if some form of ad-hoc faster than light travel is discovered but given the current understanding of physics that is not likely.

This is hardly the thread for it, but:

- There are ways to colonize planets in other solar systems without sending living human beings to them

- It is not necessary to have a 100% success rate in order for some non-zero fraction of a large number of colonization attempts to succeed

- Faster than light travel is not necessary in order for an interstellar journey to appear to take a very short time frame from the point of view of observers on the spacecraft

IOW - If our population does not stabilize/decline then society will eventually collapse. If it stabilizes then nuclear power can keep it going indefinitely.

Honestly this statement seems fairly ridiculous to me. The one constant of human civilization is continual technological progress. No single technology is something that humankind will use "indefinitely", least of all as a primary energy source. Furthermore, if by nuclear energy you are referring to fission, then you should know that the amount of fissile material in the Earth's crust is sufficient to power human civilization for only several hundred years. If you mean fusion energy, or extracting fissile materials from the Earth's mantle or core, or harvesting such materials on other bodies in the solar system, then you are talking futurism, same as I am when I speak of colonizing planets in other solar systems. Both depend on the development of new technologies in the future.

Your argument here reminds me of your arguments in several other threads. It is a kind of technostatic viewpoint, the idea that the technology we have today is somehow the end, that things that seem difficult today will forever remain difficult, and that things that seem impossible today will forever remain impossible. It is not so long since mankind thought that the Earth was the center of the universe, not so long since heavier than air flight was considered impossible, only a few short years since the idea of planets in other solar systems was mere science fiction. Your frame of reference is trapped in a kind of eternal now, like a fantasy novel whose historic backdrop is one of changeless middle ages for untold thousands of years. But that is not the world we live in; we live in a world constantly changing and progressing, where every decade new things that seemed impossible before are created.

[dre]

This is hardly the thread for it, but:

- There are ways to colonize planets in other solar systems without sending living human beings to them

- It is not necessary to have a 100% success rate in order for some non-zero fraction of a large number of colonization attempts to succeed

- Faster than light travel is not necessary in order for an interstellar journey to appear to take a very short time frame from the point of view of observers on the spacecraft

Honestly this statement seems fairly ridiculous to me. The one constant of human civilization is continual technological progress. No single technology is something that humankind will use "indefinitely", least of all as a primary energy source. Furthermore, if by nuclear energy you are referring to fission, then you should know that the amount of fissile material in the Earth's crust is sufficient to power human civilization for only several hundred years. If you mean fusion energy, or extracting fissile materials from the Earth's mantle or core, or harvesting such materials on other bodies in the solar system, then you are talking futurism, same as I am when I speak of colonizing planets in other solar systems. Both depend on the development of new technologies in the future.

Your argument here reminds me of your arguments in several other threads. It is a kind of technostatic viewpoint, the idea that the technology we have today is somehow the end, that things that seem difficult today will forever remain difficult, and that things that seem impossible today will forever remain impossible. It is not so long since mankind thought that the Earth was the center of the universe, not so long since heavier than air flight was considered impossible, only a few short years since the idea of planets in other solar systems was mere science fiction. Your frame of reference is trapped in a kind of eternal now, like a fantasy novel whose historic backdrop is one of changeless middle ages for untold thousands of years. But that is not the world we live in; we live in a world constantly changing and progressing, where every decade new things that seemed impossible before are created.

I do think theres a chance we might colonize other planets, but its a long way off. Probably thousands of years. The nearest earth size planet thats a habitable distance to its sun is 12 light years away. Without gigantic leaps in propulsion technology, Im guessing it would take hundreds of years just to send a probe there to see if its actually habitable. And from what I understand theres been cuts to funding this kind of stuff. It seems to me like it would only happen out of necessity... if our way of life here on earth was threatened.

[TimG]

Faster than light travel is not necessary in order for an interstellar journey to appear to take a very short time frame from the point of view of observers on the spacecraft

Well it won't do any good unless the spacecraft is capable of correcting engineering flaws in flight (this would require a lot of spare raw materials and equipment). Sending multiple ships won't help if they all have the same engineering flaw. It only helps protect again random faults. It also won't help if they get there and the planet is not habitable by humans (since sending out probes to check out the planets first would take too long from the perspective of people on earth).

Furthermore, if by nuclear energy you are referring to fission, then you should know that the amount of fissile material in the Earth's crust is sufficient to power human civilization for only several hundred years.

I am assuming that more will be found as a demand goes up. There is a lot of thorium out there.

Your argument here reminds me of your arguments in several other threads. It is a kind of technostatic viewpoint, the idea that the technology we have today is somehow the end

As time goes on we can do more and more with smarter software and smaller devices. We have also been able to make more effective use of low power EM emissions (a.k.a wifi). Material engineering has also advanced. AI, advanced robots, biochemical computers - all plausible because they depend on smaller processing units and better software and materials.

However, when it comes to the basics of energy production and space flight not much has changed. The laws in place 400 years ago still apply today. i.e. it takes X amount of energy to get something of Y kg into space. There is only so much energy a chemical bond can store which limits the usefulness of batteries and liquid fuels. These kinds of factors represent hard limits on what is plausible in the future not matter how optimistic you might be.

On top of that you have a Fermi Paradox that suggests that if interstellar travel was feasible then there would be evidence of extraterrestrials on earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

There are many possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox but the simplest (and perhaps most plausible) is that interstellar travel is not feasible and humans will live forever on this planet.

Edited November 29, 2013 by TimG

[dre]

Well it won't do any good unless the spacecraft is capable of correcting engineering flaws in flight (this would require a lot of spare raw materials and equipment). Sending multiple ships won't help if they all have the same engineering flaw. It only helps protect again random faults. It also won't help if they get there and the planet is not habitable by humans (since sending out probes to check out the planets first would take too long from the perspective of people on earth).

I am assuming that more will be found as a demand goes up. There is a lot of thorium out there.

As time goes on we can do more and more with smarter software and smaller devices. We have also been able to make more effective use of low power EM emissions (a.k.a wifi). Material engineering has also advanced. AI, advanced robots, biochemical computers - all plausible because they depend on smaller processing units and better software and materials.

However, when it comes to the basics of energy production and space flight not much has changed. The laws in place 400 years ago still apply today. i.e. it takes X amount of energy to get something of Y kg into space. There is only so much energy a chemical bond can store which limits the usefulness of batteries and liquid fuels. These kinds of factors represent hard limits on what is plausible in the future not matter how optimistic you might be.

Solar sails dont require propellant, and hall thrusters can run on xenon, krypton, bismuth, iodine zinc, magnesium, etc.

[Bonam]

I do think theres a chance we might colonize other planets, but its a long way off. Probably thousands of years. The nearest earth size planet thats a habitable distance to its sun is 12 light years away. Without gigantic leaps in propulsion technology, Im guessing it would take hundreds of years just to send a probe there to see if its actually habitable. And from what I understand theres been cuts to funding this kind of stuff. It seems to me like it would only happen out of necessity... if our way of life here on earth was threatened.

It will happen by private funding by individual trillionaires who are into that kind of stuff. One upside of wealth concentration...

In regards to propulsion technology, no serious attempt has been made to build an interstellar propulsion system. If we absolutely had to build an interstellar spacecraft in a short time frame, the fastest option we could start building right away would be some kind of nuclear pulse propulsion spacecraft, which could optimistically reach a % of light speed, so yes, hundreds of years to the nearest star systems likely to have planets of interest. But hundreds of years really isn't that long.

However, determining if a planet actually is habitable can be done remotely, with sufficiently advanced spectroscopes, sufficiently large telescopes, etc.

Furthermore, our current understanding of physics suggests that there is nothing to stop us from building a drive system that uses electron-positron annihilation, exhausts gamma rays at an exhaust velocity of c, and could accelerate a spacecraft to 0.99c with a reasonable payload/fuel ratio.

As time goes on we can do more and more with smarter software and smaller devices. We have also been able to make more effective use of low power EM emissions (a.k.a wifi). Material engineering has also advanced. AI, advanced robots, biochemical computers - all plausible because they depend on smaller processing units and better software and materials.

However, when it comes to the basics of energy production and space flight not much has changed. The laws in place 400 years ago still apply today. i.e. it takes X amount of energy to get something of Y kg into space. There is only so much energy a chemical bond can store which limits the usefulness of batteries and liquid fuels. These kinds of factors represent hard limits on what is plausible in the future not matter how optimistic you might be.

And yet, you ignore the interplay between all these fields. Material science keeps giving us stronger and better materials, materials that will soon be strong enough to build a space elevator, overcoming the problem of launch mass.

But I think the ultimate argument for space colonization eventually happening is the exponential growth we speak of. Let's say a project to launch an interstellar spacecraft would cost, for example, $2 trillion today. That's a large expenditure, hard to justify today, when that is ~4% of the entire world's GDP. 3% economic growth for 100 years down the road, however, and it would only be 0.2% of world GDP. The cost of spaceflight stays roughly fixed, but economies grow exponentially, making doing the same kind of task in space much cheaper over time relative to the size of the economy. Today, we routinely fund scientific projects in the cost range of $1-10 billion. In 100 years, we'll routinely fund scientific projects in the range of $20-200 billion (in today's dollars), assuming economics in the way we currently think of it is still meaningful in that timeframe.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Bonam

[TimG]

Solar sails dont require propellant, and hall thrusters can run on xenon, krypton, bismuth, iodine zinc, magnesium, etc.

The issue I am worried about is how do you repair a solar sail once you have launched the ship? The 787 was carefully engineered yet despite the billions spent they were grounded because of un-anticipated problems with the batteries. What would the crew of a space ship in interstellar space do if those kinds of problems showed up?

[Bonam]

The issue I am worried about is how do you repair a solar sail once you have launched the ship? The 787 was carefully engineered yet despite the billions spent they were grounded because of un-anticipated problems with the batteries. What would the crew of a space ship in interstellar space do if those kinds of problems showed up?

You design the solar sail not to break. If it does break, you never get where you're going and eventually die in space when supplies run out. Anyway... the solar sail on a solar sail spacecraft breaking would be a lot more like a 787's wing or engine falling off. That doesn't happen. Obviously you'd extensively test new designs in controlled/retrievable scenarios before you used them to fly live humans somewhere for hundreds of years.

But I think there are much more efficient ways to colonize nearby star systems than by sending generation ships full of humans there over hundreds of years. For example, just send some frozen human embryos, a way to grow them to maturation, and a few robotic caretakers that will function until the first few human generations are ready to take over. All it would take is a set of robots that could perform key parental duties and educate a generation of growing humans, hard to program by today's standards, but likely not too hard 20 years from now. Do that, and you've reduced your payload mass requirements from a giant generation ship weighing millions of tons to something much more manageable, maybe just a few thousand tons of payload that needs to be delivered to a candidate star system. And, you don't have to worry as much about ensuring safety, after all, if anything goes wrong, it's just some frozen embryos that get destroyed, rather than thousands of living humans, again reducing mass and cost.

[dre]

It will happen by private funding by individual trillionaires who are into that kind of stuff. One upside of wealth concentration...

Most of those guys would rather make money now, by flying space tourists to the moon or mars. Are they going to invest big in a project that will take hundreds or thousands of years? Maybe some of them, but not many.

[Bonam]

Most of those guys would rather make money now, by flying space tourists to the moon or mars. Are they going to invest big in a project that will take hundreds or thousands of years? Maybe some of them, but not many.

Of course they will, because through the use of life extension technology, they will have every expectation of themselves living to see the projects come to fruition, even if said projects take thousands of years. And it doesn't take many, or even some, it only takes one. I'm sure some future trillionaire, or quadrillionaire, will find plenty of appeal in creating whole new worlds according to his/her own designs and in his/her own image, populating them with his/her own progeny. Whatever suits their fancy.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Bonam

[dre]

But I think there are much more efficient ways to colonize nearby star systems than by sending generation ships full of humans there over hundreds of years. For example, just send some frozen human embryos, a way to grow them to maturation, and a few robotic caretakers that will function until the first few human generations are ready to take over. All it would take is a set of robots that could perform key parental duties and educate a generation of growing humans, hard to program by today's standards, but likely not too hard 20 years from now. Do that, and you've reduced your payload mass requirements from a giant generation ship weighing millions of tons to something much more manageable, maybe just a few thousand tons of payload that needs to be delivered to a candidate star system. And, you don't have to worry as much about ensuring safety, after all, if anything goes wrong, it's just some frozen embryos that get destroyed, rather than thousands of living humans, again reducing mass and cost.

Seems like something that could possibly work. Get the ship ready, Ill freeze some embryos.

Edited November 29, 2013 by dre

[TimG]

For example, just send some frozen human embryos, a way to grow them to maturation, and a few robotic caretakers that will function until the first few human generations are ready to take over.

Ok - this is more plausible because you could deal with the engineering risk by sending a 10000 ships to a 1000 different planets.

But it does not explain the Fermi Paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

There are many possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox but the simplest (and perhaps most plausible) is that interstellar travel is not feasible and humans will live forever on this planet.

Edited November 29, 2013 by TimG

[Bonam]

Ok - this is more plausible because you could send a 10000 ships to a 1000 different planets.

But it does not explain the Fermi Paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

There are many possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox but the simplest (and perhaps most plausible) is that interstellar travel is not feasible and humans will live forever on this planet.

Yes, I have heard of this paradox... I don't think it's much of a paradox, really. I mean, the very page that calls it a paradox offers like 20 plausible explanations for why it might be the case... Perhaps the Rare Earth hypothesis is correct, and the conditions needed to evolve intelligent life are really exceedingly rare and so there aren't many other intelligent civilizations around. Perhaps other civilizations are so different from ourselves that they are looking for entirely different kinds of planets to colonize, if they are even looking for planets at all. Perhaps, by some fluke, we on Earth just happen to be first in our vicinity. Perhaps all the alien civilizations are out there, and follow a prime-directive not to interfere with primitive cultures such as ourselves.

Your explanation may or may not be the simplest, if it was true. But, I don't think it is. We know the technologies needed for interstellar travel. We may have not built them yet, but we know what they are, and that nothing in the laws of physics rules them out.

And, by the way, there is nothing that says that colonizing other planets must be done in another solar system light years away. We could colonize other planets right here. It may, for example, be easier to terraform Mars; to siphon off some of Jupiter's mass, transmute it into heavier elements, and build new planets in the Sun's habitable zone; or even to build a Dyson sphere or Ringworld.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Bonam

[TimG]

Your explanation may or may not be the simplest, if it was true. But, I don't think it is. We know the technologies needed for interstellar travel. We may have not built them yet, but we know what they are, and that nothing in the laws of physics rules them out.

I was not arguing that interstellar travel was impossible - just that the time scales make building reliable ships that can make multiple journeys impossible. Now that I think about it what I meant to say is that interstellar *trade* is impossible (unless the speed of light can be broken) - if interstellar travel happens it will consist of firing many ships at prospective targets and praying. Your idea of using embryos addresses ethical issues I had with putting living people on ships that will likely never reach a safe destination.

And, by the way, there is nothing that says that colonizing other planets must be done in another solar system light years away. We could colonize other planets right here. It may, for example, be easier to terraform Mars; to siphon off some of Jupiter's mass, transmute it into heavier elements, and build new planets in the Sun's habitable zone; or even to build a Dyson sphere or Ringworld.

Large scale terriforming would take 1000s if not millions of years. In the meantime humans will have to learn to live on this planet (and this means population growth has to stop). Edited November 29, 2013 by TimG

[Bonam]

I was not arguing that interstellar travel was impossible - just that the time scales make building reliable ships that can make multiple journeys impossible. Now that I think about it what I meant to say is that interstellar *trade* is impossible

Interstellar trade of physical material items seems highly unlikely, yes, but even today a large portion of trade is in information. Interstellar exchange of information seems fairly plausible.

[TimG]

Interstellar trade of physical material items seems highly unlikely, yes, but even today a large portion of trade is in information. Interstellar exchange of information seems fairly plausible.

The speed of light makes that even more unlikely. A single transaction between earth and a colony on the nearest star would take 8 years to complete. There would be very few things that could not be done on earth in less time. Edited November 29, 2013 by TimG

[Bonam]

The speed of light makes that even more unlikely. A single transaction between earth and a colony on the nearest star would take 8 years to complete. There would be very few things that could not be done on earth in less time.

Very few, but not zero. Detailed scientific information about other star systems, the foremost creative works of people in other star systems, information on unexpected scientific discoveries or technological advances, etc. There will always be information worth transmitting and receiving even if it takes years to do so.

[Remiel]

How do you measure the wealth of a dictator?

[GostHacked]

The speed of light makes that even more unlikely. A single transaction between earth and a colony on the nearest star would take 8 years to complete. There would be very few things that could not be done on earth in less time.

Well with each technological discovery we make, those barriers could come down. Tell someone 150 years ago that we will be able to fly around the world anytime we want, wherever we want. They would scoff at the idea.

Tell them we will be able to chat with people around the world face to face using the Internet. Or landing on the moon, or many other things we have been able to do once thought improbable, impossible, or very difficult to accomplish.

With the confirmation of the Higgs-Bosson, we now know this gravitational field exists. Now that we know it exists, eventually we will start messing with it to see how it works and how we can use it to our advantage.

Edited December 10, 2013 by GostHacked

[Michael Hardner]

Well with each technological discovery we make, those barriers could come down. Tell someone 150 years ago that we will be able to fly around the world anytime we want, wherever we want. They would scoff at the idea.

If we're going there with this very sideways thread, we might as well talk about the financial boon that time travel will eventually be. We'll all be able to spend March break sipping umbrella drinks, while taking in the sermon on the mount dontcha know ?

[GostHacked]

If we're going there with this very sideways thread, we might as well talk about the financial boon that time travel will eventually be. We'll all be able to spend March break sipping umbrella drinks, while taking in the sermon on the mount dontcha know ?

The notion that money will solve issues is wrong. And if that is the case then guys like Gates should be able to fun a mission to Mars and back. What about the financial boon we are already experiencing?

[Michael Hardner]

The notion that money will solve issues is wrong.

Money does solve issues, at least some of the time. I was hungry an hour ago, and used $3.49 to buy two chicken fingers and a Granny Smith apple at Loblaws. Issue solved.

And if that is the case then guys like Gates should be able to fun a mission to Mars and back.

(Proving once again that Gates and 'fun' in the same sentence can only happen by mistake.) If money solves problems then Bill Gates... Mars... ...what now ?

What about the financial boon we are already experiencing?

Depends on when you want to measure it from. Measuring from 2008, we're in a period that euphemistically can be called 'adjustment' but measuring from the invention of money in ancient Sumeria we are doing quite well.

[GostHacked]

Money does solve issues, at least some of the time. I was hungry an hour ago, and used $3.49 to buy two chicken fingers and a Granny Smith apple at Loblaws. Issue solved.

And what would you do if money did not exist? A friend of mine has apple trees in his yard. The summer is quite good. Instead of going to any store, wanders out to a tree and simply picks one off the trees. But no one makes money off him doing that.

Depends on when you want to measure it from. Measuring from 2008, we're in a period that euphemistically can be called 'adjustment' but measuring from the invention of money in ancient Sumeria we are doing quite well.

If you believe it is an 'adjustment' meaning that the bankers flouted the rules to ill gotten gains while leaving millions of people in debt along with cities and countries. Governments bailed out the bankers by stealing from the taxpayers. Taxpayers are paying for their mistakes and will continue to pay for decades.

You still want to call it an 'adjustment'?

Edited December 11, 2013 by Charles Anthony
fixed quotes

[Michael Hardner]

And what would you do if money did not exist? A friend of mine has apple trees in his yard. The summer is quite good. Instead of going to any store, wanders out to a tree and simply picks one off the trees. But no one makes money off him doing that.

He is an economic failure and is breaking the law.

I'm kidding.

Actually, money will likely cease to exist in the next century or so, I predict. The virtualization of money is corresponding with a new era in which saved money will mean nothing - so a kind of digital barter system will take its place. You read it here first !

You still want to call it an 'adjustment'?[

Well, YOU are the one who called it a 'boon' right ? Even if you were just being sarcastic why did you say that ?