Sunday, November 14, 2004
As I may have mentioned, I'm not very functional these days. I'm not doing the stuff
I should be doing, the laundry, call mom, pay the electric bill, get a job, sell the house stuff like that. What I do instead is operate at a more abstract level where I feel less personally threatened. Absent minded professor* type stuff.
Mostly lately that's been books about politics. And politics about books.
Yesterday, tho, a little further out there:
patri friedman's 2002 books about seasteading.
there's nothing new about this idea, at least for someone like me who grew up on tales of the minerva project and knows filthy pierre and his loompanics book "how to start your own country." But it's a competent and enthusiastic work-up of the idea, by someone who might be able to make it happen. Patri has a job now, at google, and that tends to slow down most people's new country building energy, but energy is something he has a fair amount of, and maybe he'll rub shoulders with a lot of new google millionares and get financing for some of his next small steps.
I was deleting some hotmail. Prompted by comptetion from google/gmail, hotmail
is now giving away the decent sized storage it used to try to charge for,
and seems to have solved its spam problem. It's still not a primary account,
but i'm still subscribed to few things there, one of them having to do with space colonization.
Which got me to today's project.
I was thinking, ok, they now know of 140 planets.
But which ones are close enough to be interesting?
I have little interest in science for science's sake; I want results.
Some of the books I'm reading about Quayle and LBJ deal with the space progam,
and there's been some stuff in the news lately, what with the hubble and the mars rovers and the saturn cassini deal and northern lights and a meteor shower and global warming.
carol moore has a whole history as a consequence of sunspots theory.
carol is a friend and a libertarian wingnut like me.
anyway.
So it turns out that two of the new planets are in the 15 light year range, and the others are mostly 50-100 light years away or more.
So I'm thinking, with current off the shelf technology, what can you do with a planet 15 light years away?
Related question, what reasonable extrapolations of current technology can be applied to the problem?
Because anything done is going to take time, and technology won't stand still at 2004 levels, but handwaving and saying "the singularity will be here by 2012 so we might as well wait till then" is counterproductive to my current purposes.
Me, i'm old. But say you are a kid, or have a kid, not more than 20 now, likely to live to be 80 or 100 conservatively thinking. So that's a 60 year time frame.
In the lifetime of people now living, what can be done with this extra-solar planet?
We'll go back and forth between "squander all possible resources to do the task" and
"use market based solutions to do the job for an order of magnitude or two less cost". Building the hubble has had both costs and benefits.
Benefits include now knowing these these two relatively close close systems with planets. Subjovian gas giants, 1 in one system, 2 in the other, about the size of saturn.
So one next step would be, build 5 hubbles, deploy them in a relay out past the orbit of jupiter, where there is less noise from the sun. That would get improved data on these systems. How much improved, i don't know exactly, but lets say good enough to tell if there are earth-type planets there. Earth type used loosely; mars or venus would count as earth type.
Now, by 'building 5 hubbles' I don't mean they have to cost 10 billion each like the hubble did. Mass-produced korean knockoffs would suit me fine.
I'm looking for gadgets with the abilites of a hubble, but that might be doable on the cheap, and at least wouldn't cost what the first one did, because the design work has been done and the technology proven.
Obviously again, looking at these two extrasolar systems isn't all these would do;
the hubble made pretty pictures and origin of the universe type stuff and star mapping. A group of hubblettes could turn up some useful data on our solar system as well.
And be in place to be the receivers for messages sent back from robot probes headed off toward these stars.
Because that's one of the things I don't know yet. Given today's tech, how far can a spaceship go before it gets out of communication range?
Because that's one of the other things that can be done in the lifetime of someone now living. The x prize was an boost to the spacebased economy.
There's a need to develop better within-the-solar-system transport. One way to test those technologies is to plan and build and launch spacecraft to nearby stars.
I'm talking about robot probes, small payload, brains, sensors, communications device, propulsion system. Propulsion system along the lines of a solar sail or magnetic field pushed by solar wind and or laser type thing, possibly with an ion drive second stage and rocket first stage.
Let's call that the z prize. I'm not going to fund it, just describe it.
The z prize, let's make it for a billion dollars, 2004 dollars, has to reach a nearby star and signal back, by 2084, with information about what planets are in that system.
Maybe lesser prizes for the one that gets the farthest.
How much would an insurance company charge to write the policy to fund the prize?
Less than a billion. It's not clear anyone would win, and they get some float on the money.
So the prize could be funded for about the price of kevin costner's "waterworld".
Entries for the prize could be sponsored by advertizers. The sony lightsailor,
the viacom enterprise, the vatican santa maria, the brazil "nut", all pay for themselves out of publicity and r&d payback.
Now, this may be mostly wasted effort, like nfl football; so far there's no direct payback.
But let's look at what's happening as the ship travels. Telescope technology is getting better. Deployed space resources are growing. So by the time it gets there, we have a better idea what it will find. Assuming it's able to maintain communication during the trip (let's assume that - if for no other reason that commercials for the sponsor) it can at least reprogram itself with new software developments, and maybe it has nannites that can build a hyperdrive when such a thing is discovered.
This first version is just exploratory, it doesn't have the dna bank for colonization, that comes later.
This feeds on itself - if better telescopes find out there's something earthlike, or at least something potentially humanhabitable, that's instant motivation to build the next generation of even better telescopes.
The first ones sent out will be slower, almost by definition, than later quicker generations that start later but get there sooner. The prize could accomodate that, compenating both first launched and first arrived.
With telescopes saying there's something interesting there, and a ship on the way,
that's powerful incentive to launch a second better ship to try to get there sooner, or to get there with more payload. If there are multiple entries at various speeds and distances, they might be able to relay signals for each other.
If it turns out that there's nothing there, that's ok. What we got, for a small price, was practice leaving the nest, r&d work for tools we need anyway, and 10 billion people with a new reason to look up to the stars at night.
All of this is, by the way, doable with no tax dollars. Except for those nutty brazilans, but the system doesn't depend on them.
I'm not the guy who's gonna build the ship. I'm not even going to write the novel or
the screenplay or the business plan. And I didn't come up with any of these ideas; these are varations on a theme. I'm just trying to spread the meme a little further.
I called mom, but I haven't done the laundry. This was more fun.
I'm sitting on the floor in a small house in indianapolis. I'm having curried lentils with rice, way too much coffee, and will go take a few more aspirin. It's 2004, november, getting cold. There are some 100 million people with the ability to read my blog, find this meme, run with it. Most of them won't. maybe 3 or 4 will.
Currently i have no grandchildren, but that could change. I plan to be alive in 2084, when the star probe sends back its data and wins the prize.
It won't have happened quite the way I wrote it, but close enough I'll be able to brag that it was my idea.
Ok, sure, the data the probe sends back will be fake, part of an elaborate scam that was part of the game from the beginning. But in order to prove that, you have to go and check it out. And if you do that, it worked.
-arbitrary aardvark. piece may be used in its entirety if this line is kept in. -
*"Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger."
- Anonymous Chinese proverb
I should be doing, the laundry, call mom, pay the electric bill, get a job, sell the house stuff like that. What I do instead is operate at a more abstract level where I feel less personally threatened. Absent minded professor* type stuff.
Mostly lately that's been books about politics. And politics about books.
Yesterday, tho, a little further out there:
patri friedman's 2002 books about seasteading.
there's nothing new about this idea, at least for someone like me who grew up on tales of the minerva project and knows filthy pierre and his loompanics book "how to start your own country." But it's a competent and enthusiastic work-up of the idea, by someone who might be able to make it happen. Patri has a job now, at google, and that tends to slow down most people's new country building energy, but energy is something he has a fair amount of, and maybe he'll rub shoulders with a lot of new google millionares and get financing for some of his next small steps.
I was deleting some hotmail. Prompted by comptetion from google/gmail, hotmail
is now giving away the decent sized storage it used to try to charge for,
and seems to have solved its spam problem. It's still not a primary account,
but i'm still subscribed to few things there, one of them having to do with space colonization.
Which got me to today's project.
I was thinking, ok, they now know of 140 planets.
But which ones are close enough to be interesting?
I have little interest in science for science's sake; I want results.
Some of the books I'm reading about Quayle and LBJ deal with the space progam,
and there's been some stuff in the news lately, what with the hubble and the mars rovers and the saturn cassini deal and northern lights and a meteor shower and global warming.
carol moore has a whole history as a consequence of sunspots theory.
carol is a friend and a libertarian wingnut like me.
anyway.
So it turns out that two of the new planets are in the 15 light year range, and the others are mostly 50-100 light years away or more.
So I'm thinking, with current off the shelf technology, what can you do with a planet 15 light years away?
Related question, what reasonable extrapolations of current technology can be applied to the problem?
Because anything done is going to take time, and technology won't stand still at 2004 levels, but handwaving and saying "the singularity will be here by 2012 so we might as well wait till then" is counterproductive to my current purposes.
Me, i'm old. But say you are a kid, or have a kid, not more than 20 now, likely to live to be 80 or 100 conservatively thinking. So that's a 60 year time frame.
In the lifetime of people now living, what can be done with this extra-solar planet?
We'll go back and forth between "squander all possible resources to do the task" and
"use market based solutions to do the job for an order of magnitude or two less cost". Building the hubble has had both costs and benefits.
Benefits include now knowing these these two relatively close close systems with planets. Subjovian gas giants, 1 in one system, 2 in the other, about the size of saturn.
So one next step would be, build 5 hubbles, deploy them in a relay out past the orbit of jupiter, where there is less noise from the sun. That would get improved data on these systems. How much improved, i don't know exactly, but lets say good enough to tell if there are earth-type planets there. Earth type used loosely; mars or venus would count as earth type.
Now, by 'building 5 hubbles' I don't mean they have to cost 10 billion each like the hubble did. Mass-produced korean knockoffs would suit me fine.
I'm looking for gadgets with the abilites of a hubble, but that might be doable on the cheap, and at least wouldn't cost what the first one did, because the design work has been done and the technology proven.
Obviously again, looking at these two extrasolar systems isn't all these would do;
the hubble made pretty pictures and origin of the universe type stuff and star mapping. A group of hubblettes could turn up some useful data on our solar system as well.
And be in place to be the receivers for messages sent back from robot probes headed off toward these stars.
Because that's one of the things I don't know yet. Given today's tech, how far can a spaceship go before it gets out of communication range?
Because that's one of the other things that can be done in the lifetime of someone now living. The x prize was an boost to the spacebased economy.
There's a need to develop better within-the-solar-system transport. One way to test those technologies is to plan and build and launch spacecraft to nearby stars.
I'm talking about robot probes, small payload, brains, sensors, communications device, propulsion system. Propulsion system along the lines of a solar sail or magnetic field pushed by solar wind and or laser type thing, possibly with an ion drive second stage and rocket first stage.
Let's call that the z prize. I'm not going to fund it, just describe it.
The z prize, let's make it for a billion dollars, 2004 dollars, has to reach a nearby star and signal back, by 2084, with information about what planets are in that system.
Maybe lesser prizes for the one that gets the farthest.
How much would an insurance company charge to write the policy to fund the prize?
Less than a billion. It's not clear anyone would win, and they get some float on the money.
So the prize could be funded for about the price of kevin costner's "waterworld".
Entries for the prize could be sponsored by advertizers. The sony lightsailor,
the viacom enterprise, the vatican santa maria, the brazil "nut", all pay for themselves out of publicity and r&d payback.
Now, this may be mostly wasted effort, like nfl football; so far there's no direct payback.
But let's look at what's happening as the ship travels. Telescope technology is getting better. Deployed space resources are growing. So by the time it gets there, we have a better idea what it will find. Assuming it's able to maintain communication during the trip (let's assume that - if for no other reason that commercials for the sponsor) it can at least reprogram itself with new software developments, and maybe it has nannites that can build a hyperdrive when such a thing is discovered.
This first version is just exploratory, it doesn't have the dna bank for colonization, that comes later.
This feeds on itself - if better telescopes find out there's something earthlike, or at least something potentially humanhabitable, that's instant motivation to build the next generation of even better telescopes.
The first ones sent out will be slower, almost by definition, than later quicker generations that start later but get there sooner. The prize could accomodate that, compenating both first launched and first arrived.
With telescopes saying there's something interesting there, and a ship on the way,
that's powerful incentive to launch a second better ship to try to get there sooner, or to get there with more payload. If there are multiple entries at various speeds and distances, they might be able to relay signals for each other.
If it turns out that there's nothing there, that's ok. What we got, for a small price, was practice leaving the nest, r&d work for tools we need anyway, and 10 billion people with a new reason to look up to the stars at night.
All of this is, by the way, doable with no tax dollars. Except for those nutty brazilans, but the system doesn't depend on them.
I'm not the guy who's gonna build the ship. I'm not even going to write the novel or
the screenplay or the business plan. And I didn't come up with any of these ideas; these are varations on a theme. I'm just trying to spread the meme a little further.
I called mom, but I haven't done the laundry. This was more fun.
I'm sitting on the floor in a small house in indianapolis. I'm having curried lentils with rice, way too much coffee, and will go take a few more aspirin. It's 2004, november, getting cold. There are some 100 million people with the ability to read my blog, find this meme, run with it. Most of them won't. maybe 3 or 4 will.
Currently i have no grandchildren, but that could change. I plan to be alive in 2084, when the star probe sends back its data and wins the prize.
It won't have happened quite the way I wrote it, but close enough I'll be able to brag that it was my idea.
Ok, sure, the data the probe sends back will be fake, part of an elaborate scam that was part of the game from the beginning. But in order to prove that, you have to go and check it out. And if you do that, it worked.
-arbitrary aardvark. piece may be used in its entirety if this line is kept in. -
*"Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger."
- Anonymous Chinese proverb
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