Split Space Travel split from Military spending vs societal benefits

[Emily Lake]

I'm laughing that the split about space travel now has like three different simultaneous discussions going on.

 

[ZiprHead]

Not only do I think that's some sort of life, it's the sort of life I'm looking forward to, with not having to bother with maintaining so much meat all the time.

I think you're severely underestimating the impact the meat has on your brain. At a minimum, the role of sensory perception on cognitive function is pretty massive... and that's not even considering the interaction between sensory perception and emotion - and how that affects cognition.

Our brains are meat. Without the meat, we have no mind.

I'm not so sure the "meat" is important. I think it would be like the sensory deprivation solitary confined prisoners experience. It literally drives them crazy.

 

[Jarhyn]

Not only do I think that's some sort of life, it's the sort of life I'm looking forward to, with not having to bother with maintaining so much meat all the time.

I think you're severely underestimating the impact the meat has on your brain. At a minimum, the role of sensory perception on cognitive function is pretty massive... and that's not even considering the interaction between sensory perception and emotion - and how that affects cognition.

Our brains are meat. Without the meat, we have no mind.

I'm not so sure the "meat" is important. I think it would be like the sensory deprivation solitary confined prisoners experience. It literally drives them crazy.

I seriously doubt it. A sensory surface is a sensory surface; as long as there is a sensory surface expressed to the substrate, there would be no such deprivation, even if the surface is virtual or expressed into a virtual environment. It's also not as huge an issue since you can prevent deprivation over time by simply disconnecting the clock and serializing the system temporarily.

While I would never put that shitheel's junk in my brain, Neuralink very much does indicate that sensory data can be manufactured, as well.

My expectation is that the brain can adapt to nearly any sensory format or data, given that people can perceive sight/space through their ears and sound through their skin after a few months of exposure to meaningful stimulus.

 

[bilby]

There is no defining material "you"; you is a pattern, not an object. The material you is a ship of theseus; All of the components are replacable, without any effect on the self.

I challenge this assumption. We know from observation that brain injuries can fundamentally change a person's behavior and personality. We might be able to replace some components - a heart, a kidney, an eye - but we're not even remotely close to being able to perform even a partial brain transplant. And I strongly suspect that if we could replace a portion of someone's brain, they would not be the same 'person' in any reasonable sense of the word - enough of their fundamental mind would be gone to make them a different person.

I am not suggesting that we have the ability to surgically replace parts; I am pointing out that the material parts are naturally and unavoidably replaced over time.

The proportion of individual atoms or molecules in my brain today that were in my brain thirty years ago is very small; Despite that I was an adult thirty years ago (the rate of change during childhood and adolesence was much higher).

And to your closing comment, I have no doubts whatsoever that I am a different person from who I was thirty years ago. I can remember being that person, but I am glad to say that I am not still him.

Becoming a different (and hopefully better) person is one of the noblest goals any person can have, and many, perhaps most, achieve it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's not enough to be captured -- the vast majority of launch trajectories that get captured will just go into elliptical orbits. The critical thing is to cancel out the moon's orbital velocity so the projectile escapes the moon with no angular momentum relative to Earth. Your best bet is to launch horizontally at 2.6 km/sec directly backwards from the moon's trajectory around Earth. Assuming a large immovable launcher, you should have a launch window once a month. Slight variations in the speed and the time of launch would allow targeting specific locations.

Actually, there's quite a range of acceptable launch trajectories. -2600m/s is simply the easiest. All you need is to get the periapsis fairly deep in the planet, you don't need to cancel all the orbital velocity.

Note, though, that your launcher can hit at anytime, there is no launch window. It does take a bit of variation to compensate for the moon's wiggles, though.

The moon's axis of rotation is out of alignment with its orbit by about 7 degrees. That's enough that at most times of the month even if you cancel out the moon's revolution you only nail the east-west aim; the projectile still flies past the Earth thousands of km to the north or south. Since the launcher is fixed the direction of the shot is fixed, while the Earth goes back and forth across your virtual bombsight on a one month cycle. So you have to time your shot for when it's in the crosshairs. (Which means I should have said you get a launch window twice a month.)

But how much crossrange velocity is needed to correct for that? One big tug from a magnet at ejection could line it up for a hit if you're only ejecting at minimum velocity.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I have some doubts about whether this would actually work. Yes, we have the strength, but do we have the means to apply that strength to flapping for flight? Birds have big wing flap muscles, our big muscles are in our legs.

I think AC Clarke did the math on that. If you can do about 15 push-ups, you should be able to lift off on arm strength alone. A fifth of my weight? Piece-o-cake! If there is a way to harness leg strength as well, the roof is the limit.

But how strong are we on a push-forward motion (wing flap down)??

Flight by something with your legs would certainly work--but it can be done on Earth. Albeit not flapping flight.

Yes, even flapping flight!

UTIAS Snowbird - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I wasn't aware of that but I don't really count it as it could neither take off nor maintain flight for more than seconds once launched into the air. The standard metric for human powered flight has been to return to your starting point.

 

[Bomb#20]

Actually, there's quite a range of acceptable launch trajectories. -2600m/s is simply the easiest. All you need is to get the periapsis fairly deep in the planet, you don't need to cancel all the orbital velocity.

Note, though, that your launcher can hit at anytime, there is no launch window. It does take a bit of variation to compensate for the moon's wiggles, though.

The moon's axis of rotation is out of alignment with its orbit by about 7 degrees. That's enough that at most times of the month even if you cancel out the moon's revolution you only nail the east-west aim; the projectile still flies past the Earth thousands of km to the north or south. Since the launcher is fixed the direction of the shot is fixed, while the Earth goes back and forth across your virtual bombsight on a one month cycle. So you have to time your shot for when it's in the crosshairs. (Which means I should have said you get a launch window twice a month.)

But how much crossrange velocity is needed to correct for that? One big tug from a magnet at ejection could line it up for a hit if you're only ejecting at minimum velocity.

Back of the envelope, minimum velocity was .82 * 2600 and 7 degrees is .122 radians, so multiply those and it comes to 260 m/sec. That's worst case; multiply that by sin(45 degrees) to get the average, so, about 180 m/sec crossrange velocity. To do that at ejection the magnet would need to give the projectile something like a thousand g acceleration.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Actually, there's quite a range of acceptable launch trajectories. -2600m/s is simply the easiest. All you need is to get the periapsis fairly deep in the planet, you don't need to cancel all the orbital velocity.

Note, though, that your launcher can hit at anytime, there is no launch window. It does take a bit of variation to compensate for the moon's wiggles, though.

The moon's axis of rotation is out of alignment with its orbit by about 7 degrees. That's enough that at most times of the month even if you cancel out the moon's revolution you only nail the east-west aim; the projectile still flies past the Earth thousands of km to the north or south. Since the launcher is fixed the direction of the shot is fixed, while the Earth goes back and forth across your virtual bombsight on a one month cycle. So you have to time your shot for when it's in the crosshairs. (Which means I should have said you get a launch window twice a month.)

But how much crossrange velocity is needed to correct for that? One big tug from a magnet at ejection could line it up for a hit if you're only ejecting at minimum velocity.

Back of the envelope, minimum velocity was .82 * 2600 and 7 degrees is .122 radians, so multiply those and it comes to 260 m/sec. That's worst case; multiply that by sin(45 degrees) to get the average, so, about 180 m/sec crossrange velocity. To do that at ejection the magnet would need to give the projectile something like a thousand g acceleration.

Depends on the distance it has to act. Maybe not one singular magnet but you certainly could have some that could be slid back and forth to change the ejection angle. All you need is to get the change in while it's still low down--but you can eject horizontally just clearing terrain so you have a decent distance to do it.

If you throw a hunk of iron (which is probably the most able to actually punch through the atmosphere) even 1000g would be no big deal because it would act near uniformly, only tides would matter. (And is "tide" the right word when the force involved isn't gravity??)