mistermack

Well I think it most certainly is . But if you think the only important species is humans, then maybe it's not. Maybe I'm odd, but I value other species, and hate to see animals like Gorillas reduced to a few thousand, while we are nearly 8 billion.

I just did a search, it's seven years since the last post on overpopulation (on an overpopulation thread) so why not take a look at the latest? This is from Bing : And here's a youtube clip of how India is coping with a bit of crowding :

And you haven't explained the point you are making. Since when did the bleedin obvious need a reference? The ISS has a human crew, and it's obvious that they will aim at a steady comfortable temperature for them. Not too hot or too cold, in the low 20s C. In the shade, according to several accounts on the web, at the ISS, the temperature drops to -157c. In the sunshine, it rises to +120c . You get those extremes several times a day as the orbit goes into the Earth's shade. Even in the Sunshine, the dark side of the station drops to about -157, so if they wanted it to be cold, they would obviously shade it. Is It Hot Or Cold At The International Space Station? » Science ABC

I've posted this before, but here we go again : James Webb Space Telescope sunshield - Wikipedia If they wanted them to get cold, they could fit a sunshade, as above. You're asking me to explain the obvious here.

No, because they don't want them to get cold. The temperature in the shade in low earth orbit is what's relevant. There's not going to be much difference between the shade in LEO and the shade on the Moon. The only substantial difference is the warmth coming off the Earth, which would be a lot less than direct sunlight, but might still justify shading and reflecting. But as there is no atmosphere to warm you in the shade, you will be radiating heat to space, and only receive the tiny bit of heat that penetrates the shade, and a tiny bit conducted through the stays that hold the shields. Low Earth orbit would also benefit from periods of darkness, when the Earth is blocking the sunlight. As far as radiation goes, that's a different matter, although LEO can be inside the shielding of the Earth's magnetic field, compared to the Moon. But all in all, the Moon would be the better bet, and if you want to return stuff to Earth, it doesn't take a whole lot of energy to lift off from the Moon and return to Earth, going by the size of the Apollo vehicles. It's getting up there that takes the huge amounts of energy, not getting back. A stripped down remotely operated craft could be a lot smaller than what the Apollo mission used.

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Getting more accessible all the time. The latest mission, Chandrayaan-3 by India to the South Pole of the Moon, cost 90 million US dollars equiv. I believe it was a soft landing with a rover. And of course, a mission can have more than one purpose. People are doing it now, that makes it accessible, to me. Dna storage could be just a small side show in the future. There isn't really an alternative on Earth that would withstand a major asteroid impact, so if you want that insurance, the Moon is first choice. Having said that, I'm not convinced that low Earth orbit would be out of the question. You said "You have to get away from earth to leverage the cold of space. In LEO, where it’s relatively accessible, it’s difficult to maintain something cold." How difficult, and how cold?

The "Booked" caption is unfair and misleading. You could equally caption them "innocent till proven guilty". Not that I'm a fan of that crowd. The tape of Trump seems on the face of it to make him a slam dunk guilty. But OJ Simpson looked much the same, especially with his public car chase. But it only takes a clever lawyer to think up a rhyme, like " if you think this is shit, you must acquit ! " and he walks. In the good old USA courts.

Yes, it was the Webb telescope that I looked up previously, specifically, the temperature difference between the sunny side, and dark side of the sunshield was phenomenal considering the small thickness. But on the Moon, there are super cold temperatures available in naturally shaded places. Like down to minus 246C in permanent shadow at the poles. It would be fairly easy to build some permanent shade anyway, even if away from the poles, using some insulation and reflection to disperse the heat of the day. This is from NASA : " The lunar exosphere is too skimpy to trap or spread the Sun’s energy, so differences between sunlit and shadowed areas on the Moon are extreme. Temperatures near the Moon’s equator can spike to 250°F (121°C) in daylight, then plummet after nightfall to -208°F (-133°C). In deep craters near the Moon’s poles, permanent shadows keep the surface even colder — NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has measured temperatures lower than -410°F (-246°C). These forever-dark places harbor ice deposits that may be billions of years old." Weather on the Moon | Dynamic Moon – Moon: NASA Science

That's a good point. It's all speculative anyway, you would need the technology to reconstruct an organism from the dna. Extremophiles could maybe stored whole, but to reproduce an elephant from dna or even fertilized eggs might be a challenge.

No, I was trying to illustrate why a cover up would be unlikely, and hence the visits by aliens would also be an unlikely scenario. If alien visits WERE known by the government, that would mean they've indulged in a hugely elaborate cover up including paying for pointless research into alien life on Mars and exoplanets.

Yes, but not in the shade. We had that conversation before.

The chances are we will see it coming, if it's that kind of size, and doesn't happen in the next 100 years. And we will all be advised to duck.

It seems like a blatant waste of resources, to let government agencies and scientific establishments develop all of these techniques for taking samples on Mars and analysing the atmosphere of far distant exoplanets for any sign of biological gases, when our governments are well aware that the aliens have been coming to us. That's taking a cover up to rather ridiculous wasteful lengths.

Maybe so, but if that's the case it just means that low Earth orbit is not an attractive place to use. Lifting up off the Moon is much less energy intensive. And going from one space station to another in that region would be very low in energy requirements. And of course, with large amounts of water on the Moon, you can make hydrogen and oxygen fuel cheaply using solar energy. I saw a tv program the other day about the Moon, and they mentioned that Moon Dust is an excellent material for making bricks, you just heat it and set it in a mould. They are much stronger than concrete when set. They could be like Lego, interlocking, with no need for mortar, so re-useable. I don't think Earth would be much use to a mature colony of Space Stations, other than for extremely rare and valuable stuff that can't be accessed from the Moon or Asteroids. It's too energy-hungry to lift stuff off. And Mars is much the same and worse, it's less use than Earth because it's just as energy hungry, but far more hostile to live on. Although Mars does have moons that might be of use. So once technology is mature for living in space, I think nearly all of the activity will be centred around the Moon, for Materials and industry, and Space stations, for living and working long-term. I think that with the low gravity of the Moon, it's possible to shoot materials off the surface into orbit using a cannon, so the cost of getting heavy materials away from the Moon would not be high. In any case, it didn't take much fuel or rocket power to lift the American astronauts off the Moon. Yes of course, it's all about the distant future. But fusion would be probably easier to achieve and run on the Moon or in space, because you have access to super low temperatures for the superconductors, and cheap and reliable solar energy for electrical input, if needed. And maybe, without the complication of gravity, plasmas might be a bit easier to control.

That doesn't really answer the question. Anyway, if everything is expanding, does that mean I'm expanding and time is expanding, and if it is, how come there's a red shift?

All of the materials would have to be lifted up off the Earth using rockets at the moment. In the future, they will be mining the moon for materials, much much cheaper. A dna store would of course need heavy shielding which would be absolutely prohibitive to bring from the Earth. And of course, if the Earth was hit tomorrow, how would anybody access the dna store and use it? But if people were living independently up there, that's an option.

Never say never. But I agree, space stations will be the main development, and they will be gigantic and living in them will be Earth-like only much better eventually. Once life up there became truly self-sustaining, the threat of asteroids hitting Earth wouldn't mean total extinction of everything, you could store dna up there for nothing in the universe's deep freeze.

The chief executive of Chester, the hospital trust in question, was on £160,000 according to the Daily Mail, and got an £80,000 goodbye gift when he left, and I think (not sure) that he was the one that had amassed the £500,000 pension pot. This is Prime Minister sort of money in the UK, for a man who wasn't competent enough to recognise a serial killer at work when told it by seven hospital consultants. All he had to do was let the police know it MIGHT be happening, one phone call would have done it. Most of the hospital porters would have had the brains to do that. Another case that springs to mind is the Chief Executive of the National Westminster bank, who resigned in disgrace after gossiping about a customer's account, leaking financial details of the Politician's finances. She's reported to be getting a 2.4 million payoff as a reward for incompetence. There's a picture emerging, but it's going on day in day out. Lucy Letby hospital's chief executive 'was paid £80,000 by NHS' after stepping down from £160,000 role when killer nurse was arrested | Daily Mail Online

I don't think that the motivation will be financial for a long time. But they went to the Moon without any prospect of a payoff. The motivation for space colonisation for me, (if I was in charge) would be insurance against total wipeout by the Earth being hit by a big asteroid. Or by humans being wiped out by a devastating virus. (possibly more likely) But once you conquer colonising space, you have the advantage of limitless nearly free energy, and the ability to do things without having to fight gravity and to fly around with hardly any energy input. And the truly limitless extent of space itself, which we are running out of rapidly here on Earth.

I haven't got a breakdown of the various salaries, but the British press have been full of outrage about what they get, and payoff details, so I would google Lucy Letbe if you're interested. I remember one guy left with a £500,000 pension pot, and four of them incredibly got an extra job title of "guardians of openness" or something similar, actually being responsible for protecting whistle blowers. You really couldn't make it up. My point is the lack of basic common sense, in so-called managers who are on very substantial salaries, that indicates that the salaries are not high due to market forces or talent, they're up there because they have power over their own rates of pay. If you own a business, there's nothing wrong with that, but when you are a paid employee in a quasi government organisation, there's no way you should have any influence on your salary, not on anyone else in management. It's a recipe for mutual back-scratching. PS. The British Museum are in the firing line for similar shit management at the moment. Thousands of items stolen, in spite of the management being alerted at least two years ago that it's treasures were being sold on ebay. Just like the Chester Hospital, they "investigated" and it was "case closed" until the true facts came out.

I've always favoured the River Model, of GR, where gravity is modelled as a flow of space into a black hole. If space flows into massive bodies like black holes and stars, it must be collapsing on arrival. If there was a mechanism whereby the collapse in one place, was mirrored by instant re-emergence somewhere else, would that lead to the apparent expansion, and redshift?

Managers who are shit at management, in other words. Getting huge salaries and pensions, dwarfing those of the consultants who took their concerns to them.

Top salaries are getting obscene, and the old argument that you can't get talented people for less is really suspect. We've just had a really bitter scandal here in the UK, where seven consultants were constantly warning that an incredible stream of unexpected infant deaths in a hospital in Chester were all happening when one particular nurse was on shift. She's just been convicted of the murder of seven babies, attempted murder of six, and got off several more for lack of conclusive evidence. The management didn't get it, over and over, even forcing the consultants to APOLOGISE to the murderer, nurse Lucy Letby, and they were threatened with being reported to the medical council if they persisted. These managers were all on big salaries, but really, they could not have done a worse job. They've all left with payoffs and big pension pots on top of their big salaries. Any one of the consultants, or nursing staff, or parents, or porters could have done a better job, but we're still fed this line that "you can't get that sort of talent for less" . The way top salaries have exploded isn't market forces, it's backroom deals. These people set their own salaries, and the salaries of the people who set their salaries. It's all deals done in back rooms and on golf greens, and talent has very little to do with it. It used to be freemasons, now it's little 'clubs' that get together and milk the public.

How many dimensions does a polygon have?